

X 0 o x. 


R I ^ 






*v.o p c o /%. I . 

s S ** A . ^ ’ * \>’ * * * 0 / 

,v ' -**wv -e- v - - 

=>/ V# 


\ 1 B 


'« . A aU <• '/ ..S 

% ° . c.° ' * •* 

'o o' 

>»A * 


s 


*4. ^ 

* xjsfe ffl 1 V ’S * 

«ii * \° °x. * 

' /,' ■ j 1 "wc *>• - 


<^ » ^ 

< > <?> y 0 «t k * aG 

>V l JL*« °o 

V ^ 


v 

o o x 


') M O 


<t O' 

O' (V > ^ 


!0 


v * 


" Sir 

■m///A ° 

21 . Z 

■> x * v ° 

cx_ 


>v 


s .\ O ■/ « • ■* 


v » a * ^ 


$ 

0 * x M ^0 <* X/ 

_ 0 > c 0 N c * -i 
C/ 15 ^ *P 


* * * S A 



'^o 0^ 

N, cV > \ 

: 

rw« ✓ 

V , ' , J%L s' 

* 

% 

<<^, *> 

o 



-to 

'/ \ \ '^V& *N 

\ 0c l<. 


* .0 


* X so v r -o, y * ;r 0 ^ .**' 

^ . S + * T ^ N V 

"x- ^ 

* <'\ <\ 

** ^ 


V 


V *'<* 0 f 


1 C* ** 

C * 

s * <* f 

'/ 

' ^ 
* ®8 


» V ° 


^ 0 * ^ ^ 


; ^V->m\,< 


M 


o 0 







> 


r ^ V 


y » * ° , ■ v' ^ ' / v , v . . * ■%' ° • ■• ■* o^ . ^ 

" * " * * % M 

A V » rfT ti v ' 1 * ° 0 X ° 0| 

P°*. “ " 

V . S . . > V* . H o ’\\V 

v - r r* «>>. 

C A V * 

«\ » «C ^ 

°*-* ^ 
x . _ . - c° .‘ 

^ ^ ; 

$ 

/- 

✓ 

o ^ 

. 90 . r^> 0 H ^ \^' v ^ •. 

k> ^ 

<£ * mm r 



■*■ * > *\ 



\ 0< ^. 



t> 

' * -<f ** ’ A}>' .'•' * * ^o, 

V\^ ^ ^ _a\ 


cT>. 








.o’ 1 * ^ s Vj^ / qj 

^ %■= •• i II 


% %. a* 

4 z ,v .„ z H//. 




<r > ml*' 

* Y * 0 f '> 81 s * * * / 

^ {2 S?l *, .A’ v <&<f!v§j^'' * '-f* 

r rl\w« An ° <£>■. A * *f&kHC%i! <1 <!■ - .V, 

a ’o *■* " ^ '* 

^ d 6 ’ «\ lift "v/ 

f> A , * v 1 8 * 

2*. .A \ N Mrft///^-^ ? 

+A* V* 



^ ^ -.y ""-i * 

_ g, * -0»> C^- ^ V 

V’*°V ,-»A> *"'*<,' 

-*> _ r & 55 * - A^ 


c* 




^ * 0 N 0 ° ^ 

't O. V <> v * o 

* *fA 

^ * 



r» 

o 



*. 

o 

•^> 

A V ° ^ 

* 

//A 

A 

<D 

y 0 


*e>7?^V 0 ... %-/ 

A* 0 ^ > ,<V s s * '❖ O V ^ > 

. A S ^/Niv / /Jj» K. <5 cs O -v / 

»\ *‘ k ' f\ /l ^ '>^, /A ’ 

> .aa, %.^’ ^ 

i> 





% =,w 

r> % K ^ 
^ Y 0 * V 


<s> \ N 
/* 


^ ; f °o 

' A 




v> ^ 

A? <f- ^ 

* *G. 0*^ C° N °' X '<? \^ X « V 1 8 > 

* ■>* \ ’^v - 

; .\° 

^ <5 

<y 



^ ^ '*•,-- .' . 0 ' 'O'. 

*- * AVA ^ A * ****'• *' 

z V “» 




•** 

. y 0 s >. "* ' v - / tt * s v , „ ?/ 

C - -O’ .‘°- ^ ^ ,# y\y*Jl °0 

✓ ^ a\ v Mnv/yd^ ■? 

' *i. V? 

* * * 


o 



o5 ^ - 






* H 

1 ' ^ 

s' 


V 

r 

7 c 

/ -y 

'>3. 

£ 


# V % °„%^\}r * -i 

-S (> N 

-O" c 
0 ^ 


aV cT>. 







p 



SILAS MARNER 










« 







GEORGE ELIOT. 


The Silver Series of English and American Classics 


\Z 

GEORGE ELIOT’S 

it 

SILAS MARNER 


EDITED , WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES 
BY 

CARROLL LEWIS MAXCY, M.A. 

PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH IN WILLIAMS COLLEGE 



y* i\ > , ,5> p? p* p* V 3 

] ’>,5 >>> ’ >3 AjV} *3 !)) 5 >^ 

SILVER, BURDETT AND COMPANY 

NEW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO 

: J£\\^ 




<1 




N> 


A 


THE LIBRARY OF 
CONGRESS, 
Two Co^ita Received 

AUG. 26 1901 

Copyright entry 

", l^o/ 
fc1_ASS CO xXc. N<*. 
/ f O 7 q 
COPY S. 


Copyright, 1901, 

By SILVER, BURDETT & COMPANY. 


► « tv <n « 

® • # « W ft' 

« » ® «< 

® ® * e AY ft' 

• • • a ft' 


(i> ®’ «» a, <*■ « « <i> 

A * ® • * « 

ft O «' * ® ft- III 

® W ® ftl ft «jl 

® ffl ® A' (It 4V «1 «| qi 


• <». « # « 
di u it, « 

<n di ii e « di 

(// at v « 

* HI «, ill « m 


(. ( i 
c 

(. c 

c 

c c c 


,( < 

' l 

f < 

< c 

t (. 




HU 



c 


C f c 









^rV<i 


PREFACE 

This edition of “ Silas Marner ” is an attempt to introduce 
the young student to the work of George Eliot. As stated in 
the Introduction, the editor has preferred to emphasize a very 
few of the author’s characteristics rather than to present a 
confusing resume of all that painstaking criticism has evolved. 

The conventional “ Instructions to Teachers” have been 
omitted. In these days the average teacher of English in the 
secondary schools has a very definite idea of what he wishes 
to teach his classes and of how he intends to conduct his 
courses. Detailed directions from college instructors are not 
always hailed with glad acclaim and followed admiringly with 
bated breath ; the school teacher has his own individual prob- 
lems which he solves for himself. The editor can only hope 
that those who use this edition may find it adapted to their 
own methods and ends. 


Williams College 
June 1901 





CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

Chapter I 5 

Chapter II 16 

Chapter III 24 

Chapter IV 35 

Chapter V 42 

Chapter VI 47 

Chapter VII 57 

Chapter VIII . . .62 

Chapter IX 70 

Chapter X 77 

Chapter XI 92 

Chapter XII 112 

Chapter XIII 118 

Chapter XIV 125 

Chapter XV • 138 

Chapter XVI 140 

Chapter XVII 155 

Chapter XVIII 165 

Chapter XIX 169 

Chapter XX 178 

Chapter XXI 180 

Conclusion 184 



INTRODUCTION. 


BIOGRAPHICAL. 

“Nov. 22, 1819 — Mary Ann Evans was born at Arbury Farm 
at five o’clock this morning.” This entry on the page of her 
father’s diary marks the birth of the famous writer, better 
known by her chosen pen-name, “ George Eliot.” 

Many of the characters and the incidents that afterward 
formed part of her novels were based upon the experiences of 
her own early days. The strong, self-respecting character of 
Adam Bpde, as well as his great physical strength, have their 
original in Mary Ann Evans’s own father, so that Adam Bede, 
although not intended as a portrait, yet rests upon something 
more substantial than mere imagination. Maggie Tulliver, the 
heroine of “ The Mill on the Floss,” is in feature, manner, and 
disposition, the novelist herself, as she was in her childhood. 
The rustic scenery that forms so important an element in almost 
all of her novels, — the Midland England of the early century, — 
is drawn from what the writer herself had seen and known. 
Dinah Morris, Mrs. Poyser, Silas Marner, Tom Tulliver, Doro- 
thea, and Celia — these and many others among her characters 
are not wholly children of fancy ; their sorrows, their joys, 
their sufferings, their triumphs, had already played a part in 
actual human life. It is the sincerity thus born of personal 
experience that gives much of the charm to George Eliot’s 
work. 

Miss Evans’s earliest days, passed in her quiet home, were 
not especially eventful. Her thirteenth year, however, was an 

ix 


X 


INTRODUCTION. 


epoch in her life ; she entered the school of Miss Franklin at 
Coventry. In view of her subsequent career, it is interesting 
to note that in this school the young girl excelled in the art of 
composition, — her talent placing her in advance of all her 
schoolmates. One of the characteristics of her mature years 
was her appreciative fondness of music, and the beginnings of 
this musical taste are to be traced to her school days. We are 
told that her music master looked upon his hour with her as a 
relaxation and delight after his irritating struggles with the 
more backward pupils, and soon he confessed that he could no 
longer instruct her. 

Another fact to be noted in connection with life at the 
Franklin School is the effect upon her religious nature. As 
every student of George Eliot knows, the religious element 
plays no unimportant part in her life and work. It is there- 
fore interesting to note the first signs appearing in these early 
days. The young girl was remarkably sympathetic and yield- 
ing to external influences ; she embraced with enthusiasm the 
religious views of the Miss Franklins, for whom she entertained 
the most sincere respect, and became prominent as a religious 
leader among the girls of the school, conducting the school 
prayer meetings and identifying herself with all similar inter- 
ests of the institution. She always entered with heart and 
soul into whatever occupied her mind; consequently at this 
time religious matters took strong hold upon her. In her eager- 
ness to mold her life according to the dictates of her con- 
science, she identified herself with the “ evangelicals ” ; that is 
to say, she felt little attraction for those who emphasized the 
ceremonials, the traditions, the authority of the Church, as 
against what might be termed the individual or personal con- 
ception of religion. Such was the earnestness of her convic-. 
tions that she “ could not rest satisfied with a mere profession 
of faith without trying to shape her own life — and, it may be 
added, the lives around her — in accordance with her convic- 


INTRODUCTION. xi 

tions. The pursuit of pleasure was a snare ; dress was vanity ; 
society was a danger.” 

After spending two or three years under the refining influ- 
ence of the Miss Franklins, Miss Evans was summoned home 
on account of the severe illness of her mother, and upon the 
death of Mrs. Evans and the marriage of an elder sister, some 
months later she assumed the management of her father’s 
household. Into her housekeeping she threw the heartiness 
that always characterized her, and she was never satisfied with 
anything short of perfection. Yet she found time for consid- 
erable charitable work among the poor of the neighborhood, 
and moreover, both by lessons from an instructor and by sys- 
tematic reading, she strove to advance her intellectual develop- 
ment. The keynote of her life as thus far shown was self- 
abnegation, earnestness, enthusiasm. 

The first few years devoted to the management of household 
affairs were relieved by an occasional but unimportant attempt 
at literary composition. The year 1841, however, was eventful 
in her life story ; at that time her father removed to the neigh- 
borhood of Coventry, and the new acquaintances there made 
had important bearing on her subsequent career. Among those 
whom Miss Evans now met were Mr. and Mrs. Bray and Mrs. 
Bray’s sister, Miss Hennell. Mr. Bray, although a manufac- 
turer, had devoted much time to self-education and culture ; he 
had already done some writing, and in the very year of meeting 
Miss Evans he was publishing a philosophical work entitled 
“The Philosophy of Necessity.” Another member of this 
little group, Mr. Charles Hennell, a brother of Mrs. Bray, had 
recently published “An Inquiry concerning the Origin of Chris- 
tianity,” a work critical and skeptical in character, attempting to 
prove that an impartial consideration of the life of Christ, as 
exhibited in the Gospels, shows Him to be an enthusiast and a 
revolutionist as well as a great moral and religious teacher ; 
while the study of the older Scriptural writings proves that 


Xll 


INTRODUCTION. 


although not absolutely original in His teachings and sayings, 
yet He was far superior to the average order of mankind, — 
one of those “ minds occurring but at rare intervals in the his- 
tory of our race.” 

Under such surroundings Miss Evans soon found herself 
drifting from her religious moorings. Mr. Bray had a strongly 
speculative mind ; his wife was in entire sympathy with her 
brother’s skeptical ideas ; on Miss Evans’s own side there was a 
tendency already manifest for questioning some of the gener- 
ally accepted truths of revealed religion, and furthermore, a 
natural inclination to harmonize with those about her. It is 
not surprising that under these conditions she soon found her- 
self unable to hold allegiance to the strict formulas to which 
she had hitherto subscribed. She felt that in continuing 
attendance upon church services she would be guilty of hypoc- 
risy. This at once caused a breach with her father, a strict 
churchman, — and for a time she was on the point of leaving 
home and attempting to earn her own livelihood by teach- 
ing. Ultimately, however, she and her father were reconciled. 
Although she did cut completely adrift from all form of faith 
in the deepest things, it was her most intense desire to live a 
truly good life, to serve for the right. One of her own letters 
will perhaps make clear her position. She writes : “ I wish to 
be among the ranks of that glorious crusade that is seeking to 
set Truth’s Holy Sepulchre free from a usurped domination. 
We shall then see her resurrection! Meanwhile, although I 
cannot rank among my principles of action a fear of vengeance 
eternal, gratitude for predestined salvation, or a revelation of 
future glories as a reward, I fully participate in the belief that 
the only heaven here or hereafter is to be found in conformity 
with the will of the Supreme ; a continual aiming at the attain- 
ment of the perfect ideal, the true logos that dwells in the 
bosom of the Father.” 

The acquaintance with the Brays and Hennells deepened 


INTRODUCTION. 


xiii 

year by year, and this communion with persons of rare culture 
and intellectuality continued to exercise a strong influence 
upon Miss Evans’s life and personality. It was in connection 
with this circle of friends that she was led into her first really 
important piece of literary work, the translation of Strauss’s 
Leben Jesu (“Life of Jesus”), which she undertook in 1844. 
Upon it the future novelist put her best efforts. The result was 
encouraging ; in the words of a contemporary reviewer, “ Who- 
ever reads these volumes without any reference to the German 
must be pleased with the easy, perspicuous, idiomatic, and 
harmonious force of the English style.” 

In 1849 Mr. Evans died, and his daughter was left alone. 
Shortly after her father’s death she went over to the Continent 
with her friends, the Brays, who left her at Geneva. Here she 
remained for nearly a year. Upon her return to England she 
joined the editorial staff of the Westminster Review. Her life 
in London was in strong contrast to the comparative isolation 
that had preceded. She was burdened with confining duties of 
the editorial chair, until she sometimes despaired of ever pro- 
ducing anything above the level of grinding drudgery. But 
there were bright spots even amid the engrossing cares of her 
position ; not un frequent attendance at operas, oratorios, lec- 
tures, and public gatherings of one sort and another ; occasional 
runs into the country to see the Brays ; spare moments devoted 
to reading favorite authors. Hers was a life of intensity, of 
absorption. 

At this period, too, she became acquainted with many of 
those whose names are yet remembered ; in her letters we 
find frequent mention of Emerson, Herbert Spencer, Huxley, 
Harriet Martineau, Carlyle, and George Henry Lewes. Lewes 
was one of the most versatile writers then living. He 
was the author of many philosophical, biographical, and critical 
articles in the reviews, as well as of novels and of dramas. 
Into so many directions did he turn his attention, and so varied 


XIV 


INTRODUCTION. 


were his hobbies, that Thackeray once made the remark that 
he should not be surprised any fine day to see Lewes come 
riding along the street on an elephant. Their connection with 
the Westminster had thrown Miss Evans and Lewes so fre- 
quently together that they became intimate acquaintances. 
The admiration that each felt for the other’s personality and 
intellectual gifts gradually developed into something stronger 
than mere friendship, and in 1854 they were united. As to the 
informality of this celebrated union, the mere fact is that Mr. 
Lewes and Miss Evans elected to live together without under- 
going the usual legal process that both believed to be unjust. 
Lewes was already married, but his wife had deserted him 
and had broken up his home. Without act of Parliament he 
could not secure divorce. Such a law both he and Miss 
Evans looked upon as unjust and exacting. In protest they 
consented to live together as man and wife without the cus- 
tomary legal forms. How Miss Evans viewed this crucial 
step in her career may best be judged from her own words. 
She writes in a letter to Mrs. Bray shortly after the mar- 
riage: “If there is any one action or relation of my life 
which is, and always has been, profoundly serious, it is my 
relation to Mr. Lewes. ... No one can be better aware than 
yourself that it is possible for two people to hold different 
opinions on momentous subjects with equal sincerity, and an 
equally earnest conviction that their respective opinions are 
alone the truly moral ones. If we differ on the subject of the 
marriage laws, I at least can believe of you that you cleave to 
what you believe to be good ; and I don’t know of anything in 
the nature of your views that should prevent you from believ- 
ing the same of me. . . . Light and easily broken ties are what 
I neither desire theoretically nor could live for practically. 
Women who are satisfied with such ties do not act as I have 
done. That any unworldly, unsuperstitious person who is 
sufficiently acquainted with the realities of life can pronounce 


INTRODUCTION. 


XV 


my relation to Mr. Lewes immoral, I can only understand by 
remembering how subtile and complex are the influences that 
mold opinion. ... We are leading no life of self-indulgence, 
except, indeed, that being happy in each other, we find every- 
thing easy. We are working hard to provide for others better 
than we provide for ourselves, and to fulfill every responsibility 
that lies upon us.” 

Whatever may be said regarding the good judgment dis- 
played in taking this important action, or of its morality, one 
indisputable fact remains, — that but for her husband “ George 
Eliot” would never have been; at most, we should have 
had Mary Ann Evans, a well-known translator and writer of 
reviews. It was her husband who recognized her latent possi- 
bilities, whose encouragement of hesitating genius gave to 
literature such masterpieces as “Adam Bede,” “The Mill on 
the Floss,” “ Silas Marner ” — in fact, all that has made the 
name of “ George Eliot ” famous. 

Immediately after their marriage, Lewes and his wife went 
to Germany, where they spent three months at Weimar. Lewes 
was busy upon his “Life of Goethe,” and his wife worked 
and studied with him. They remained in Europe the greater 
part of a year, Mrs. Lewes devoting herself to translation, 
articles for the Westminster , and reading German and English 
classics with her husband. The amount and quality of her 
reading is something that strikes with amazement the modern 
skimmer of fashionable literature. For instance, in her diary 
of a single month we find the following : Book XXIV of the 
“Iliad,” Book I of Spenser’s “Faery Queene,” Clough’s poems, 
Mommsen’s “Borne,” Ben Jonson’s “Alchemist” and “Vol- 
pone,” Bright’s speeches, four cantos of “Don Juan,” and 
selections from Tlie Spectator , not to mention miscellaneous 
reading in Italian literature. Another month we find the 
following memoranda of works read : she finishes Lucretius, 
reads Victor Hugo’s “ L’homme qui Bit,” Frau von Hillern’s 


XVI 


INTRODUCTION. 


“ Ein Arzt der Seele,” Nisard’s “ History of French Litera- 
ture,” Jewitt’s “ Universal History,” Sismondi’s “ Litter ature 
du Midi ,” Drayton’s “Nymphidia” and “ Polyolbion,” three 
chapters of Grote, several of the idyls of Theocritus, Rey- 
baud’s “ Les Reformateurs Modernes,” and various parts of 
Plato’s “ Republic.” Any one familiar with her singular 
thoroughness and depth of appreciation knows that this read- 
ing was not superficially done. 

September, 1856, marks another epoch in the life of this 
remarkable woman, for then it was that she began to write 
fiction. How this new departure came about is best told in 
her own words : “It had always been a vague dream of mine 
that some time or other I might write a novel ; and my shad- 
owy conception of what the novel was to be varied, of course, 
from one epoch of my life to another. But I never went 
further toward the actual writing of the novel than an intro- 
ductory chapter describing a Staffordshire village and the 
life of the neighboring farmhouses ; and as the years passed 
on I lost any hope that I should ever be able to write a novel, 
just as I desponded about everything else in my future life. I 
always thought I was deficient in dramatic power, both of con- 
struction and dialogue, but I felt I should be at my ease in the 
descriptive parts of a novel. My ‘ introductory chapter ’ was 
pure description, though there were good materials in it for 
dramatic presentation. It happened to be among the papers I 
had with me in Germany, and one evening at Berlin something 
led me to read it to George. He was struck with it as a bit of 
concrete description, and it suggested to him the possibility of 
my being able to write a novel, though he distrusted — indeed, 
disbelieved in — my possession of any dramatic power. Still, 
he began to think I might as well try some time what I could 
do in fiction, and by and by, when we came back to England, 
and I had greater success than he ever suspected in other 
kinds of writing, his impression that it was worth while to see 


INTRODUCTION. 


XY11 


how far my mental power would go toward the production of 
a novel, was strengthened. He began to say very positively, 
‘ You must try and write a story,’ and when we were at Tenby 
he urged me to begin at once. I deferred it, however, after my 
usual fashion with work that does not present itself as an 
absolute duty. But one morning, as I was thinking what 
should be the subject of my first story, my thoughts merged 
themselves into a dreamy doze, and I imagined myself writing 
a story, of which the title was • ‘ The Sad Fortunes of the 
Beverend Amos Barton.’ I was soon wide awake again and 
told G. He said, ‘ Oh, what a capital title ! ’ and from that 
time I had settled in my mind that this should be my first 
story. George used to say, ‘ It may be a failure — it may be 
that you are unable to write fiction. Or, perhaps, it may be 
just good enough to warrant your trying again.’ Again, ‘ Yon 
may write a chef-d'oeuvre at once — there’s no telling.’ But 
his prevalent impression was, that though I could hardly 
write a poor novel, my effort would want the highest quality 
of fiction — dramatic presentation. He used to say, ‘ You have 
wit, description, and philosophy — these go a good way toward 
the production of a novel. It is worth while for you to try the 
experiment.’ 

“ We determined that if my story turned out good enough 
we would send it to Blackwood; but G. thought the more 
probable result was that I should have to lay it aside and try 
again. 

“But when we returned to Bichmond I had to write my 
article on ‘Silly Novels,’ and my review of Contemporary 
Literature for the Westminster, so that I did not begin my 
story till September 22. After I had begun it, as we were 
walking in the park, I mentioned to G. that I had thought of 
the plan of writing a series of stories, containing sketches 
drawn from my own observation of the clergy, and calling 
them ‘Scenes from Clerical Life,’ opening with ‘Amos Bar- 


xvm 


INTRODUCTION. 


ton.’ He at once accepted the notion as a good one — fresh 
and striking ; and about a week afterwards, when I read him 
the first part of 1 Amos,’ he had no longer any doubt about my 
ability to carry out the plan. The scene at Cross Farm, he 
said, satisfied him that I had the very element he had been 
doubtful about — it was clear I could write good dialogue. 
There still remained the question whether I could command 
any pathos ; and that was to be decided by the mode in which 
I treated Milly’s death. One night G. went to town on pur- 
pose to leave me a quiet evening for writing it. I wrote the 
chapter from the news brought by the shepherd to Mrs. 
Hackit, to the moment when Amos is dragged from the bed- 
side, and I read it to G. when he came home. We both cried 
over it, and then he came up to me and kissed me, saying, ‘ 1 
think your pathos is better than your fun.’ ” 

Lewes forwarded the manuscript of “ The Sad Fortunes of 
Amos Barton ” to Blackwood, merely saying that he was acting 
for a friend who desired to remain unknown, and that the 
story was but the beginning of a proposed series along similar 
lines. Blackwood accepted “Amos Barton,” but in no very en- 
thusiastic fashion, and said that before consenting to accept 
further parts of the series he should wish to see them. Black- 
wood’s lack of enthusiasm, as well as certain criticisms con- 
tained in his letter to Mr. Lewes after receiving the sheets, 
were very discouraging to Mrs. Lewes. She was extremely 
sensitive to adverse criticism, and it was only continued sym- 
pathy and praise from her husband that induced her to con- 
tinue writing. Upon learning from Mr. Lewes, however, that 
the letter had discouraged the unknown author of “Amos Bar- 
ton,” Mr. Blackwood hastened to correct the impression left by 
his first letter; he expressed his willingness to print the story 
at once, and urged an immediate continuance of the series. 

The first story was received with general favor, but Mrs. 
Lewes wished that her identity be still kept secret. In a 


INTRODUCTION. 


XIX 


letter to Blackwood, shortly after the appearance of “Amos 
Barton,” she wrote : “ Whatever may be the success of my 
stories, I shall be resolute in preserving my incognito , having 
observed that a nom de plume secures all the advantages with- 
out the disagreeables of reputation. Perhaps, therefore, it 
will be well to give you my prospective name, as a tub to 
throw to the whale in case of curious inquiries ; and accord- 
ingly I subscribe myself, best and most sympathizing of edi- 
tors, yours very truly, George Eliot.” George was Mr. 
Lewes’s Christian name, and Eliot she chose because, as she 
said, “ it was a good, mouth-filling, easily pronounced word.” 
It must be borne in mind that not even Blackwood himself 
knew the identity of his correspondent and contributor; her 
husband acted as the go-between in all communications, and as 
yet there was no suspicion that Mrs. Lewes was the “ friend ” 
in whose interests he was acting. Some weeks later she wrote 
in a letter to Blackwood: “For several reasons I am very 
anxious to retain my incognito for some time to come, and, to 
an author not already famous, anonymity is the highest pres- 
tige. Besides, if George Eliot turns out a dull dog, and an 
ineffective writer — a mere flash in the pan — I, for one, am 
determined to cut him on the first intimation of that disa- 
greeable fact.” 

“Amos Barton” was followed by the other parts of the 
series entitled “ Clerical Scenes,” namely, “ Mr. Gilfil’s Love 
Story” and “Janet’s Repentance,” — all before the end of 
1857. 

The “Clerical Scenes” rose to immediate popularity. The 
public saw that in this new writer, George Eliot, literature 
had indeed made an acquisition. Dickens, then in the flood- 
tide of his popularity, detected the woman’s touch through 
the masculine name. In a letter to “ George Eliot, Esq.,” he 
wrote : “ In addressing these few words of thankfulness to the 
creator of ‘ The Sad Fortunes of the Rev. Amos Barton ’ and 


XX 


INTRODUCTION. 


the love story of Mr. Gilfil, I am (I presume) bound to adopt i 
the name that it pleases that excellent writer to assume. I 
can suggest no better one ; but I should have been strongly 
disposed, if I had been left to my own devices, to address the 
said writer as a woman. I have observed what seemed to me 
such womanly touches in those moving fictions, that the assur- 
ance on the title page is insufficient to satisfy me even now. 

If they originated with no woman, I believe that no man ever j 
before had the art of making himself mentally so like a 
woman since the world began.” How different from the con- 
ception of Mrs. Thomas Carlyle, who wrote about the same 
time : “ I hope to know some day if the person I am address- 
ing bears any resemblance to the idea I have conceived of him 
in my mind — a man of middle age, with a wife, from whom 
he has got those beautiful feminine touches in his book; a 
good many children, and a dog that he has as much fondness 
for as I have for my little Hero! For the rest — not just a 
clergyman, but brother or first cousin to a clergyman ! ” 

With the favorable reception of her work there came a 
pleasure hitherto unknown to George Eliot. She felt that life 
had deepened ; she realized acutely her past failings, and was 
conscious of a new and unusual strength with which to meet 
the duties that should fall to her lot. A general despair of 
self and a lack of confidence had always characterized her 
temperament, and, in spite of all resolutions to the contrary, 
they continued, to a greater or less degree, until the end. 
Sympathy and encouragement from those whom she loved 
were always essential elements in her life. In her own eyes 
her best work was of little worth until stamped with the 
approval of those for whose opinion she cared. 

Closely connected with her lack of confidence, is another 
characteristic of her nature and work. Her early life, as has 
been seen, was a time of deep inward questioning and doubt. 
Hers was not a soul-life of confidence, restfulness, buoyancy, 


INTRODUCTION. 


XXI 


and exultation. As a consequence, her works are marked 
throughout by a tone of sadness that must appeal to every 
reader. “ Silas Marner,” while ending happily as far as the two 
principal characters are concerned, is not a novel of cheerful- 
ness; “Adam Bede ” and “ The Mill on the Floss ” are set to a 
minor key; “Bomola” is the tale of a bright life ruined by 
selfishness, and in its ruin dragging with it another life into 
sorrow and suffering ; the “ Clerical Scenes ” are masterpieces 
of pathos. So in all of her work the reader may trace a spirit 
to which the world is one of earnestness rather than of vanity, 
a conviction that self-renunciation and self-sacrifice are the 
highways to ultimate happiness. 

Early in 1858, shortly after the completion of “Clerical 
Scenes,” George Eliot and her husband again set out for Ger- 
many. She was now busy with her novel “ Adam Bede,” which 
she had begun within a month after finishing “ Janet’s. Bepent- 
ance.” “Adam Bede” appeared in 1859 and met with imme- 
diate and marked success. Eighteen thousand copies — a 
notable number in those early days — were sold during the 
first year after its appearance, and there was soon a demand for 
cheap editions within the reach of those possessed of only lim- 
ited means. George Eliot was now recognized as one of Eng- 
land’s leading novelists, and, although her identity was still 
unknown, letters came to her through her publishers, and 
thence through Lewes, from such men as Dickens, Herbert 
Spencer, and scores of others, expressing their delight. Charles 
Beade wrote that “ Adam Bede ” was “ the finest thing since 
Shakespeare ” ; the novel was quoted in Parliament as a work 
familiar to all; well-known university men neglected their 
studies to read it. 

Her rapidly growing popularity and other considerations 
soon led her to reveal her identity. A clergyman named Big- 
gins had already claimed to be George Eliot ; he had succeeded 
in obtaining from sympathizing and charitable readers certain 


XXII 


INTRODUCTION. 


sums of money ; and even George Eliot’s most intimate friends 
believed that his assertions might be true. A book appeared 
entitled “ Adam Bede, Junior,” which attained a considerable 
sale on the strength of its name, rather than on its own merits. 
Therefore the true author revealed herself, and furnished incon- 
testable proofs of her identity, — much to the discomfiture of 
the Liggins hosts. It is noticeable, however, that the author 
of the novels continued then, as now, to be known by her pen- 
name. Mary Ann Evans, Mrs. Lewes, are strange names to 
many; George Eliot is as familiar as Walter Scott, Charles 
Dickens, or William Makepeace Thackeray. 

In 1860 appeared another work, “ The Mill on the Floss,” and 
immediately upon its completion the author and her husband 
went to Italy. The production of her novels was always 
attended with great nervous strain; after finishing one she 
was often in a state of collapse and needed prompt mental 
quiet. This she had found by experience could best be secured 
by travel amid strange scenes, or by life in some quiet foreign 
town. Hence the number of pilgrimages that we find her tak- 
ing at somewhat regular intervals throughout her life. 

For many years she had looked forward to the time when 
she might visit Italy, in the hope that the land of classic 
antiquities and of notable works of art would enlarge her life, i 
would bring added culture, would arouse new inspiration. She 
was not disappointed. About a month after her return she 
wrote to Blackwood, her publisher and friend, “ When we were 
in Florence I was rather fired with the idea of writing an his- 
torical romance — scene, Florence; period, the close of the 
fifteenth century, which was marked by Savonarola’s career 
and martyrdom. Mr. Lewes has encouraged me to persevere 
in the project, saying that I should probably do something in 
historical romance rather different in character from what has 
been done before. But I want first to write another English 
story, and the plan I should like to carry out is this : to pub- 




INTRODUCTION. 


xxiii 


lish my next English novel when my Italian one is advanced 
enough for us to begin its publication afterward in ‘ Maga.’ 
It would appear without a name in the Magazine, and be sub- 
sequently reprinted with the name of George Eliot.” Here 
we have the first mention of two subsequent novels, — 
“Romola” and “Silas Marner.” 

Three months later there is an entry in her journal to the 
following effect: “I am engaged now in writing a story — 
the idea of which came to me after our arrival in this house, 
and which has thrust itself between me and the other book I 
was meditating. It is ‘ Silas Marner, the Weaver of Raveloe.’ ” 
Two months later she writes to Mr. Blackwood, “ I am writ- 
ing a story, which came across my other plans by a sudden in- 
spiration. I don’t know at present whether it will resolve 
itself into a book short enough for me to complete before 
Easter, or whether it will expand beyond that possibility. 
It seems to me that nobody will take any interest in it but 
myself, for it is extremely unlike the popular stories going ;• 
but Mr. Lewes declares that I am wrong, and says it is as 
good as anything I have done. It is a story of old-fash- 
ioned village life, which has unfolded itself from the merest 
millet-seed of thought.” 

Still later she writes to Mr. Blackwood : “ I don’t wonder at 
your finding my story, as far as you have read it, rather sombre ; 
indeed, I should not have believed that any one would have 
been interested in it but myself (since Wordsworth is dead) if 
Mr. Lewes had not been strongly arrested by it. But I hope 
you will not find it at all a sad story, as a whole, since it sets 
— or is intended to set — in a strong light the remedial influ- 
ences of pure, natural human relations. The Nemesis is a very 
mild one. I have felt all through as if the story would have 
lent itself best to metrical rather than to prose fiction, espe- 
cially in all that relates to the psychology of Silas; except 
that, under that treatment, there could not be an equal play of 


XXIV 


INTRODUCTION. 


humor. It came to me first of all quite suddenly, as a sort of 
legendary tale, suggested by my recollection of having once, 
in early childhood, seen a linen-weaver with a bag on his back ; 
but, as my mind dwelt on the subject, I became inclined to a 
more realistic treatment.” In March, 1861, she finished “ Silas 
Marner ” and sent it to the publishers. 

Having completed this story of plain rustic life, George 
Eliot returned to the composition of the historic Italian novel 
that had, long been in her thoughts. In order to refresh her 
mind upon foreign matters, and to gain additional inspiration 
for the work that she was about to undertake, she spent a 
month and a half in Florence. Even after a delightful stay 
in the famous old city it was with great difficulty that she was 
able to make any substantial progress in the story. The num- 
ber of books that she studied in Italian and French as well as 
in English, in order to fill herself with the spirit of Romola’s 
Florence, is immense. Often in despair and dejection she was 
on the point of giving over the task ; illness and fear returned 
again and again ; only through the encouragement and inspira- 
tion that she received from Mr. Lewes was she induced to con- 
tinue the work. After nearly two years of this harrowing toil 
“ Romola ” was given to the world, and then the author wrote, 
doubtless with considerable truth, “ I began it a young woman 
— I finished it an old woman.” 

Three years afterward she completed “ Felix Holt, the Radi- 
cal,” the least generally known of all her novels. Her next pro- 
duction was “The Spanish Gypsy,” a dramatic poem upon which 
she had busied herself for several years. Here, as in the case of 
“ Romola,” she had done a large amount of preparatory reading, 
and was often on the point of throwing the work aside. “ The 
Spanish Gypsy ” was well received by the reviews, but it is 
not her poetry, full as it may be of rich and novel thoughts, 
that will make George Eliot known to posterity. 

In her diary for January 1, 1870, she mentions the writing of 


INTRODUCTION. 


, XXY 


a new novel, to be called “ Middlemarch,” as among the tasks of 
the coming twelvemonth. Advancing years and overstrained 
nerves were beginning now to tell upon her; the eighteen 
months or more during which she worked upon “Middle- 
march ” saw many periods of illness and all work had to be 
thrown aside. When at last, in 1872, it did appear, its recep- 
tion by the public exceeded that given to any other of her 
novels, even to “ Adam Bede.” “ Middlemarch ” was followed 
four years later by “Daniel Deronda,” thought by some to 
mark the climax of her power as a delineator of character. 

In 1878 Mr. Lewes died, — a severe blow to George Eliot, 
for rarely has there been a more ideal coupling of kindred 
sympathies, or a deeper love than that existing between these 
two gifted persons. Her sense of desolation was deep; it 
made serious inroads upon her health and spirits. At the 
time of her husband’s death she had almost ready for publica- 
tion her last work, a series of essays entitled “ The Impres- 
sions of Theophrastus Such,” but this was not issued for 
several months. 

Gradually she revived from the condition of hopelessness 
into which her husband’s death had cast her, and to a con- 
siderable degree entered again into her accustomed life. 
Prominent among the many friends who showed her very 
great kindness during the time of her loneliness, was the 
family of John Walter Cross, with whom she and Mr. Lewes 
had . for years been upon terms of close intimacy. Mr. Cross 
was younger than Mrs. Lewes by twenty years, but he eagerly 
devoted himself to her service. The families lived near each 
other, and their close relations gave her one upon whose ten- 
derness and care she might rely. In 1880 she and Mr. Cross 
were married, and all who knew them approved of the union. 
A few months after the marriage, however, Mrs. Cross fell ill 
from a severe cold, which developed rapidly and seriously 
until December 22, 1880, when she passed away. 


XXVI 


INTRODUCTION. 


A few years after her death Mr. Cross edited an extensive 
collection of her letters, which form an autobiography of the 
famous novelist, and this has remained the authoritative, 
although not altogether the most satisfactory, record of her 
life. 


CBITICAL. 


George Eliot, as one of the greatest writers of English fic- 
tion, has been the subject of searching criticism; her methods, 
her defects, her excellences, have, in turn, offered material for 
extended analysis. “ Silas Marner ” is in many respects typi- 
cal of her work, and might well be made the subject of long 
study. Under the limitations of this edition, however, it will 
be possible to note but a few of the author’s characteristics. 

Thackeray deals principally — although not exclusively — 
with the better classes of English society ; Colonel Newcome, 
Henry Esmond, Beatrix, Major Pendennis, — such characters 
are always associated with his name. Dickens, on the con- 
trary, turns our minds to another extreme of the social scale, 
and draws his typical characters largely from the slums or 
from middle-class life; Mr. Micawber, Mr. Pickwick, The 
Artful Dodger, Mrs. Gamp, Mrs. Hickleby, are fairly repre- 
sentative of the men and women that rise at the mention of 
Dickens’s name. Scott gives a new life to the figures of his- 
tory ; his atmosphere is rich in romantic color ; Ivanhoe, Amy 
Bobsart, Eoger Wildrake, Bichard of the Lion-heart, Mary 
Queen of Scots, are types of his characterizations. With 
George Eliot, the characteristic figures are as different again. 
She is the artist of humble, rustic life. While in her novels, 
as, indeed, in those of the writers already mentioned, we 
find various phases of life, yet the figures that seem most 
truly associated with her best work are humble people, — 
farmers, weavers, dairy maids, frequenters of the country 
tavern. Like Thomas Hardy of the present day, she has done 


INTRODUCTION. 


XXV11 


much to elevate the humble to the rank of the heroic. She 
has realized that the trench-digger, who attracts no more than 
a curious glance from the passer-by on the dusty highway, has 
in his own little world all the sorrows, the joys, the love, the 
tragedy, it may be, that by some have been looked upon as 
peculiar to a Lear, an Othello, a Macbeth. George Eliot has 
gone farther, — she has made us feel that the humble folk — 
the Adam Bedes, the Marners, the Tullivers, the Hetty Sorrels 
— are made of the same stuff as ourselves; with them we 
sorrow or rejoice, we suffer or succeed. This wonderful power 
of sympathetic treatment, this placing herself at the very soul- 
seat of her creations, so that she draws them from within, and 
does not, like the photographer, picture merely feature and 
dress, is one of her peculiar triumphs. “ Silas Marner ” is an 
excellent illustration of this power : it treats of those humble 
in degree; it tells how a most unpretentious life was reclaimed 
from darkness and despair ; yet it is an epic. 

This same sympathetic treatment that underlies her charac- 
ter delineations is also at the foundation of her descriptive 
power. The party at Squire Cass’s,' the night at the Rainbow, 
when Silas appears, spectre-like, before his fellow townsmen, 
the scene where Godfrey reveals to Nancy the secret of his 
early marriage, — these and others are characterized by the 
very touches that are required to give them reality, — the 
touches of sympathy, whereby the writer projects herself into 
the very scene, and lives in it. 

Again, George Eliot’s work is not so much the story of deeds 
as of lives. The reader of “ Robinson Crusoe,” of “ Ivanhoe,” of 
“ The Last of the Mohicans,” of “ Treasure Island,” thinks of 
what happened ; he remembers the tournaments, the shipwrecks, 
the hairbreadth escapes, the cruel massacres ; the mention of 
each book brings to his mind a series of vivid pictures that 
stand out clear and distinct. What is more, the very personali- 
ties of the heroes do not change ; that is, Ivanhoe is the same 


xxym 


INTRODUCTION. 


Ivanhoe when he marries Rowena as when he first returns in 
palmer’s garb to Cedric’s home, — save, perhaps, for a certain 
mellowness, the result of years. Robinson Crusoe is the same 
Crusoe when he leaves his island as when he was cast up ship- 
wrecked on its shores. With the characters of George Eliot’s 
novels all is different. The mention of “Adam Bede,’ - ’ “Amos 
Barton,” “The Mill on the Floss,” or “Silas Marner” does not at 
once bring up startling tableaus ; they are the stories of inner 
life, of sorrow, of sacrifice, of soul-growth. To be sure, acts do 
accompany, often cause, the development of the inner life ; but 
it is, after all, the story of a personality that George Eliot tells. 
Thus, for example, “ Silas Marner ” is not the story of how 
an old weaver found a little girl by his fireside one cold night, 
and brought her up as his own ; rather, it is the story of how 
a narrowed soul, stunned into insensibility and almost anni- 
hilated, was warmed again into life, cheerful, happy, and lov- 
ing ; its topic is recovery of self. 

In making the real story hinge upon their inner selves, 
rather than upon what they saw or what they did, George 
Eliot is of a class apart. The “ novel of the soul ” is a devel- 
opment of later day fiction. Since the time of George Eliot 
the number of “ psychologic novelists,” as they are called, has 
increased. Although to the average reader their works are not 
so absorbing as tales of adventure or the ordinary romance, 
yet they possess a peculiar depth and intellectual charm for 
those who are willing to view novel reading as something more 
serious than a mere means of passing away an idle summer 
hour. The psychologic novel has to-day reached its culmina- 
tion in the writings of George Meredith, whose work must be 
studied ; ordinary superficial readers can do nothing with them. 

Some writers keep aloof from their writings ; that is, the 
reader does not, from beginning ‘to end, feel the presence of 
the author apart from the story. This is not the case with 
George Eliot. She continually interjects herself, and holds 


INTRODUCTION. 


xxix 


converse with her reader. She discusses with him the hero’s 
course of conduct; she digresses into thoughts suggested by 
his fortunes or his actions ; she drives home lessons that the 
course of events seems to justify. Many readers object to 
this. But the student of fiction should consider the writer’s 
point of view. If the novel is more than a mere narrative of 
events, after the style of those mentioned in the last para- 
graph ; if it is to emphasize some moral ; to show that true 
life, for example, is living for others rather than for self ; if it 
is to show the growth or the blasting of a soul; if it is to 
acquaint us with what the hero really is, rather than with 
what his outward acts would seem to show ; — under these 
circumstances it may well be that the writer of fiction is 
bound by the very nature of his task to come forward and 
commune with us. Objection to George Eliot’s method of 
occasional digressions and moralizings seems rather superficial, 
especially to those who are willing to read for something more 
than to satisfy their curiosity as to whether Dunstan Cass ever 
escapes from the stone-pit, or whether Eppie falls in love with 
Aaron. 

Much might be written about George Eliot’s humor and 
pathos, her views of religious matters, her altruism, her 
vocabulary, the purity of her style, her occasional infelicities 
of one sort or another ; but the student of “ Silas Marner ” will 
make at least the beginnings of a discriminating familiarity 
with George Eliot if, as he reads the following pages, he will 
bear in mind the few points to which attention has already 
been directed: her sympathetic treatment of rustic life; her 
effective descriptions ; her method of dealing with person- 
alities rather than with acts ; her personal contact with the 
reader. If he is tempted to continue his acquaintance with 
the author, he is advised to read “ Adam Bede,” “ Scenes from 
Clerical Life,” and “ The Mill on the Floss ” first ; after these, 
the other novels may follow as he may select. 



SILAS MARNER: 

THE WEAVER OF RAVELOE. 


“ A child, more than all other gifts 
That earth can offer to declining man. 

Brings hope with it, and forward-looking thoughts. ” 

—Wordsworth. 


PART I. 


CHAPTER I. 

In the days when the spinning-wheels hummed busily in 
the farmhouses — and even great ladies, clothed in silk and 
thread-lace, had their toy spinning-wheels of polished oak — 
there might be seen in districts far away among the lanes, or 
deep in the bosom, of the hills, certain pallid undersized men, 
who, by the side of the brawny country-folk, looked like the 
remnants of a disinherited race. The shepherd’s dog barked 
fiercely when one of these alien-looking men appeared on the 
upland, dark against the early winter sunset ; for what dog 
likes a figure bent under a heavy bag? — and these pale men 
rarely stirred abroad without that mysterious burden. The 
shepherd himself, though he had good reason to believe that 
the bag held nothing but flaxen thread, or else the long rolls 
of strong linen spun from that thread, was not quite sure that 
this trade of weaving, indispensable though it was, could be 
carried on entirely without the help of the Evil One. In that 
far-off time superstition clung easily round every person or 
thing that was at all unwonted, or even intermittent and occa- 


6 


SILAS MARNER. 


sional merely, like the visits of the pedler or the knife-grinder. 
No one knew where wandering men had their homes or their 
origin; and how was a man to be explained unless you at least 
knew somebody who knew his father or mother? To the 
peasants of old times, the world outside their own direct expe- 
rience was a region of vagueness and mystery : to their un- 
travelled thought a state of wandering was a conception as dim 
as the winter life of the swallows that came back with the 
spring; and even a settler, if he came from distant parts, 
hardly ever ceased to be viewed with a remnant of distrust, 
which would have prevented any surprise if a long course of 
inoffensive conduct on his part had ended in the commission 
of a crime; especially if he had any reputation for knowledge, 
or showed any skill in handicraft. All cleverness, whether in 
the rapid use of that difficult instrument the tongue, or in 
some other art unfamiliar to villagers, was in itself suspi- 
cious : honest folk, born and bred in a visible manner, were 
mostly not overwise or clever — at least, not beyond such a 
matter as knowing the signs of the weather ; and the process 
by which rapidity and dexterity of any kind were acquired 
was so wholly hidden, that they partook of the nature of con- 
juring. In this way it came to pass that those scattered 
linen- weavers — emigrants from the town into the country — 
were to the last regarded as aliens by their rustic neighbors, 
and usually contracted the eccentric habits which belong to a 
state of loneliness. 

In the early years of this century, such a linen- weaver, 
named Silas Marner, worked at his vocation in a stone cottage 
that stood among the nutty hedgerows near the village of Rav- 
eloe, and not far from the edge of a deserted stone-pit. The 
questionable sound of Silas’s loom, so unlike the natural 
cheerful trotting of the winnowing-machine, or the simpler 
rhythm of the flail, had a half-fearful fascination for the Rav- 
eloe boys, who would often leave off their nutting or birds’ - 
nesting to peep in at the window of the stone cottage, counter- 
balancing a certain awe at the mysterious action of the loom, 
by a pleasant sense of scornful superiority, drawn from the 
mockery of its alternating noises, along with the bent, tread- 
mill attitude of the weaver. But sometimes it happened that 


SILAS MARKER. 


7 


Marner, pausing to adjust an irregularity in his thread, became 
aware of the small scoundrels, and, though chary of his time, 
he liked their intrusion so ill that he would descend from his 
loom, and, opening the door, would fix on them a gaze that 
was always enough to make them take to their legs in terror. 
For how was it possible to believe that those large brown pro- 
tuberant eyes in Silas Marner’ s pale face really saw nothing 
very distinctly that was not close to them, and not rather that 
their dreadful stare could dart cramp, or rickets, or a wry 
mouth at any boy who happened to be in the rear? They had, 
perhaps, heard their fathers and mothers hint th&t Silas Mar- 
ner could cure folk’s rheumatism if he had a mind, and add, 
still more darkly, that if you could only speak the devil fair 
enough, he might save you the cost of the doctor. Such 
strange lingering echoes of the old demon- worship might per- 
haps even now be caught by the diligent listener among the 
gray -haired peasantry ; for the rude mind with difficulty asso- 
ciates the ideas of power and benignity. A shadowy concep- 
tion of power that by much persuasion can be induced to re- 
frain from inflicting harm, is the shape most easily taken by 
the sense of the Invisible in the minds of men who have 
always been pressed close by primitive wants, and to whom a 
life of hard toil has never been illuminated by any enthusias- 
tic religious faith. To them pain and mishap present a far 
wider range of possibilities than gladness and enjoyment: 
their imagination is almost barren of the images that feed 
desire and hope, but is all overgrown by recollections that are 
a perpetual pasture to fear. “ Is there anything you can fancy 
that you would like to eat?” I once said to an old laboring 
man, who was in his last illness, and who had refused all the 
food his wife had offered him. “No,” he answered, “I’ve 
never been used to nothing but common victual, and I can’t 
eat that.” Experience had bred no fancies in him that could 
raise the phantasm of appetite. 

And Raveloe was a village where many of the old echoes 
lingered, undroWned by new voices. Not that it was one of 
those barren parishes lying on the outskirts of civilization — 
inhabited by meagre sheep and thinly scattered shepherds : on 
the contrary, it lay in the rich central plain of what we are 


8 


SILAS MARKER. 


pleased to call Merry England, and held farms which, speak' 
ing from a spiritual point of view, paid highly desirable tithes. 
But it was nestled in a snug well-wooded hollow, quite an 
hour’s journey on horseback from any turnpike, where it was 
never reached by the vibrations of the coach -horn, or of public 
opinion. It was an important-looking village, with a fine old 
church and large churchyard in the heart of it, and two or 
three large brick-and-stone homesteads, with well-walled or- 
chards and ornamental weathercocks, standing close upon the 
road, and lifting more imposing fronts than the rectory, which 
peeped from among the trees on the other side of the church- 
yard: — a village which showed at once the summits of its 
social life, and told the practised eye that there was no great 
park and manor-house in the vicinity, but that there were 
several chiefs in Raveloe who could farm badly quite at their 
ease, drawing enough money from their bad farming, in those 
war times, to live in a rollicking fashion, and keep a jolly 
Christmas, Whitsun and Easter tide. 

It was fifteen years since Silas Marner had first come to 
Raveloe; he was then simply a pallid young man, with promi- 
nent short-sighted brown eyes, whose appearance would have 
had nothing strange for people of average culture and experi- 
ence ; but for the villagers near whom he had come to settle it 
had mysterious peculiarities which corresponded with the ex- 
ceptional nature of his occupation, and his advent from an 
^unknown region called “ North’ard.” So had his w r ay of -life: 
— he invited no comer to step across his door-sill, and he never 
strolled into the village to drink a pint at the Rainbow, or to 
gossip at the wheelwright’s: he sought no man or woman, 
save for the purposes of his calling, or in order to supply him- 
self with necessaries; and it was soon clear to the Raveloe 
lasses that he would never urge one of them to accept him 
against her will — quite as if he had heard them declare that 
they would never marry a dead man come to life again. This 
view of Marner’ s personality was not without another ground 
than his pale face and unexampled eyes ; for Jem Rodney, the 
mole-catcher, averred that one evening as he was returning 
homeward he saw Silas Marner leaning against a stile with a 
heavy bag on his back, instead of resting the bag on the stile 


SILAS MARKER. 


9 


as a man in his senses would have done ; and that, on coming 
up to him, he saw that Marner’s eyes were set like a dead 
man’s, aud he spoke to him, and shook him, and his limbs 
were stiff, and his hands clutched the bag as if they’d been 
made of iron; but just as he had made up his mind that the 
weaver was dead, he came all right again, like, as you might 
say, in the winking of an eye, and said “ Good-night, ” and 
walked off. All this Jem swore he had seen, more by token 
that it was the very day he had been mole-catching on Squire 
Cass’s land, down by the old saw-pit. Some said Marner must 
have been in a “fit,” a word which seemed to explain things 
otherwise incredible; but the argumentative Mr. Macey, clerk 
of the parish, shook his head, and asked if anybody was ever 
known to go off in a fit and not fall down. A fit was a stroke, 
wasn’t it? and it was in the nature of a stroke to partly take 
away the use of a man’s limbs and throw him on the parish, 
if he’d got no children to look to. No, no; it was no stroke 
that would let a man stand on his legs, like a horse between 
the shafts, and then walk off as soon as you can say “ Gee ! ” 
Rut there might be such a thing as a man’s soul being loose 
from his body, and going out and in, like a bird out of its 
nest and back ; and that was how folks got over-wise, for they 
went to school in this shell-less state to those who could teach 
them more than their neighbors could learn with their five 
senses and the parson. And where did Master Marner get 
his knowledge of herbs from — and charms too, if he liked to 
give them away? Jem Rodney’s story was no more than what 
might have been expected by anybody who had seen how Mar- 
ner had cured Sally Oates, and made her sleep like a baby, 
when her heart had been beating enough to burst her body, for 
two months and more, while she had been under the doctor’s 
care. He might cure more folks if he would; but he was > 
worth speaking fair, if it was only to keep him from doing 
you a mischief. 

It was partly to this vague fear that Marner was indebted 
for protecting him from the persecution that his singularities 
might have drawn upon him, but still more to the fact that, 
the old linen-weaver in the neighboring parish of Tarley being 
dead, his handicraft made him a highly welcome settler to the 


10 


SILAS MARKER. 


richer housewives of the district, and even to the more provi- 
dent cottagers, who had their little stock of yarn at the year’s 
end. Their sense of his usefulness would have counteracted 
any repugnance or suspicion which was not confirmed by a 
deficiency in the quality or the tale of the cloth he wove for 
them. And the years rolled on without producing any change 
in the impressions of the neighbors concerning Marner, except 
the change from novelty to habit. At the end of fifteen years </ 
the Raveloe men said just the same things about Silas Marner 
as at the beginning : they did not say them quite so often, but 
they believed them much more strongly when they did say 
them. There was only one important addition which the 
years had brought : it was, that Master Marner had laid by a 
fine sight of money somewhere, and that he could buy up “ big- 
ger men ” than himself. 

But while opinion concerning him had remained nearly sta- 
tionary, and his daily habits had presented scarcely any visi- 
ble change, Marner’ s inward life had been a history and a 
metamorphosis, as that of every fervid nature must be when it 
has fled or been condemned to solitude. His life, before he 
came to Raveloe, had been filled with the movement, the men- 
tal activity, and the close fellowship which, in that day as in 
this, marked the life of an artisan early incorporated in a nar - 
row religious sect, where the poorest layman has the chance of 
distinguishing himself by gifts of speech, and has, at the very 
least, the weight of a silent voter in the government of his 
community. Marner was highly thought of in that little hid- 
den world, known to itself as the church assembling in Lan- 
tern Yard; he was believed to be a young man of exemplary 
life and ardent faith ; and a peculiar interest had been centred 
in him ever since he had fallen, at a prayer-meeting, into a 
mysterious rigidity and suspension of consciousness, which, 
lasting for an hour or more, had been mistaken for death. To 
have sought a medical explanation for this phenomenon would 
have been held by Silas himself, as well as by his minister and 
fellow-members, a wilful self-exclusion from the spiritual sig- 
nificance that might lie therein. Silas was evidently a brother 
selected for a peculiar discipline ; and though the effort to in- 
terpret this discipline was discouraged by the absence, on his 


SILAS MARNER. 


11 


part, of any spiritual vision during his outward trance, yet it 
was believed by himself and others that its effect was seen in 
an accession of light and fervor. A less truthful man than he 
might have been tempted into the subsequent creation of a 
vision in the form of resurgent memory ; a less sane man might 
have believed in such a creation; but Silas was both sane and 
honest, though, as with many honest and fervent men, culture 
had not defined any channels for his sense of mystery, and 
so it spread itself over the proper pathway of inquiry and 
knowledge. He had inherited from his mother some acquaint- 
ance with medicinal herbs and their preparation — a little store 
of wisdom which she had imparted to him as a solemn bequest 
— but of late years he had had doubts about the lawfulness of 
applying this knowledge, believing that herbs could have no 
efficacy without prayer, and that prayer might suffice without 
herbs; so that his inherited delight to wander through the 
fields in search of foxglove and dandelion and coltsfoot began 
to wear to him the character of a temptation. 

Among the members of his church there was one young 
man, a little older than himself, with whom he had long lived 
in such close friendship that it was the custom of their Lan- 
tern Yard brethren to call them David and Jonathan. The 
real name of the friend was William Dane, and he, too, was 
regarded as a shining instance of youthful piety, though some- 
what given to over- severity toward weaker brethren, and to be 
so dazzled by his own light as to hold himself wiser than his 
teachers. But whatever blemishes others might discern in 
William, to his friend’s mind he was faultless ; for Marner 
had one of those impressible self-doubting natures which, at 
an inexperienced age, admire imperativeness and lean on con- 
tradiction. The expression of trusting simplicity in Marner’s 
face, heightened by that absence of special observation, that 
defenceless, deer-like gaze which belongs to large prominent 
eyes, was strongly contrasted by the self-complacent suppres- 
sion of inward triumph that lurked in the narrow slanting eyes 
and compressed lips of William Dane. One of the most fre- 
quent topics of conversation between the two friends was As- 
surance of salvation : Silas confessed that he could never arrive 
at anything higher than hope mingled with fear, and listened 


12 


SILAS MARNER. 


with longing wonder when William declared that he had pos- 
sessed unshaken assurance ever since, in the period of his con- 
version, he had dreamed that he saw the words “ calling and 
election sure” standing by themselves on a white page in the 
open Bible. Such colloquies have occupied many a pair of 
pale-faced weavers, whose unnurtured souls have been like 
young winged things, fluttering forsaken in the twilight. 

It had seemed to the unsuspecting Silas that the friendship 
had suffered no chill even from his formation of another at- 
tachment of a closer kind. For some months he had been 
engaged to a young servant-woman, waiting only for a little 
increase to their mutual savings in order to their marriage ; 
and it was a great delight to him that Sarah did not object to 
William’s occasional presence in their Sunday interviews. It 
was at this point in their history that Silas’s cataleptic fit 
occurred during the prayer-meeting; and amidst the various 
queries and expressions of interest addressed to him by his 
fellow-members William’s suggestion alone jarred with the 
general sympathy toward a brother thus singled out for special 
dealings. He observed that, to him, this trance looked more 
like a visitation of Satan than a proof of divine favor, and 
exhorted his friend to see that he hid no accursed thing within 
his soul. Silas, feeling bound to accept rebuke and admoni- 
tion as a brotherly office, felt no resentment, but only pain, at 
his friend’s doubts concerning him ; and to this was soon added 
some anxiety at the perception that Sarah’s manner toward him 
began to exhibit a strange fluctuation between an effort at an 
increased manifestation of regard and involuntary signs of 
shrinking and dislike. He asked her if she wished to break 
off their engagement ; but she denied this : their engagement 
was known to the church, and had been recognized in the 
prayer-meeting; it could not be broken off without strict inves- 
tigation, and Sarah could render no reason that would be sanc- 
tioned by the feeling of the community. At this time the 
senior deacon was taken dangerously ill, and, being a childless 
widower, he was tended night and day by some of the younger 
brethren or sisters. Silas frequently took his turn in the night- 
watching with William, the one relieving the other at two in 
the morning. The old man, contrary to expectation, seemed 


SILAS MARNER. 


13 


to be on the way to recovery, when one night Silas, sitting up 
by his bedside, observed that his usual audible breathing had 
ceased. The candle was burning low, and he had to lift it to 
see the patient’s face distinctly. Examination convinced him 
that the deacon was dead — had been dead some time, for the 
limbs were rigid. Silas asked himself if he had been asleep, 
and looked at the clock : it was already four in the morning. 
How was it that William had not come? Hrf'much anxiety he 
went to seek for help, and soon there were several friends 
assembled in the house, the minister among them, while Silas 
went away to his work, wishing he could have met William to 
know the reason of his non-appearance. But at six o’clock, 
as he was thinking of going to seek his friend, William came, 
and with him the minister. They came to summon him to 
Lantern Yard, to meet the church members there; and to his 
inquiry concerning the cause of the summons the only reply 
was, “You will hear.” Nothing further was said until Silas 
was seated in the vestry, in front of the minister, with the eyes 
of those who to him represented God’s people fixed solemnly 
upon him. Then the minister, taking out a pocket-knife, 
showed it to Silas, and asked him if he knew where he had 
left that knife? Silas said he did not know that he had left 
it anywhere out of his own pocket — but he was trembling at 
this strange interrogation. He was then exhorted not to hide 
his sin, but to confess and repent. The knife had been found 
in the bureau by the departed deacon’s bedside — found in the 
place where the little bag of church money had lain, which 
the minister himself had seen the day before. Some hand had 
removed that bag ; and whose hand could it be if not that of 
the man to whom the knife belonged? For some time Silas 
was mute with astonishment : then he said, “ God will clear 
me : I know nothing about the knife being there, or the money 
being gone. Search me and my dwelling; you will find noth- 
ing but three pound five of my own savings, which William 
Dane knows I have had these six months.” At this William 
groaned, but the minister said, “ The proof is heavy against 
you, brother Marner. The money was taken in the night last 
past, and no man was with our departed brother but you, for 
William Dane declares to us that he was hindered by sudden 


14 


SILAS MARKER. 


sickness from going to take his place as usual, and you your- 
self said that he had not come ; and, moreover, you neglected 
the dead body. ” 

“I must have slept, ” said Silas. Then, after a pause, he 
added, “ Or 1 must have had another visitation like that which 
you have all seen me under, so that the thief must have come 
and gone while I was not in the body, but out of the body. 
But, I say again, search me and my dwelling, for I have been 
nowhere else.” 

The search was made, and it ended — in William Dane’s 
finding the well-known bag, empty, tucked behind the chest of 
drawers in Silas’s chamber! On this William exhorted his 
friend to confess, and not to hide his sin any longer. Silas 
turned a look of keen reproach on him, and said, “ William, 
for nine years that we have gone in and out together have you 
ever known me to tell a lie? But God will clear me.” 

“Brother,” said William, “how do I know what you may 
have done in the secret chambers of your heart, to give Satan 
an advantage over you? ” 

Silas was still looking at his friend. Suddenly a deep flush 
came over his face, and he was about to speak impetuously, 
when he seemed checked again by some inward shock, that 
sent the flush back and made him tremble. But at last he 
spoke feebly, looking at William. 

“ I remember now — the knife wasn’t in my pocket.” 

William said, “I know nothing of what you mean.” The 
other persons present, however, began to inquire where Silas 
meant to say that the knife was, but he would give no further 
explanation: he only said, “I am sore stricken; I can say 
nothing. God will clear me.” 

On their return to the vestry there was further deliberation. 
Any resort to legal measures for ascertaining the culprit was 
contrary to the principles of the church in Lantern Yard, ac- 
cording to which prosecution was forbidden to Christians, even 
had the case held less scandal to the community. But the 
members were bound to take other measures for finding out 
the truth, and they resolved on praying and drawing lots. 
This resolution can be a ground of surprise only to those who 
are unacquainted with that obscure religious life which has 


SILAS MARNER. 


15 


gone on in the alleys of our towns. Silas knelt with his breth- 
ren, relying on his own innocence being certified by immediate 
divine interference, but feeling that there was sorrow and 
mourning behind for him even then — that his trust in man had 
been cruelly bruised. The lots declared that Silas Marner was 
guilty . He was solemnly suspended from church-membership, 
and called upon to render up the stolen money ; only on con- 
fession, as the sign of repentance, could he be received once 
more within the folds of the church. Marner listened in 
silence. At last, when every one rose to depart, he went 
toward William Dane and said, in a voice shaken by agita- 
tion, — 

“ The last time I remember using my knife was when I 
took it out to cut a strap for you. I don’t remember putting 
it in my pocket again. You stole the money, and you have 
woven a plot to lay the sin at my door. But you may prosper, 
for all that : there is no just God that governs the earth right- 
eously, but a God of lies, that bears witness against the inno- 
cent.” 

There was a general shudder at this blasphemy. 

William said meekly, “ I leave our brethren to judge whether 
this is the voice of Satan or not. I can do nothing but pray 
for you, Silas.” 

Poor Marner went out with that despair in his soul — that 
shaken trust in God and man, which is little short of madness 
to a loving nature. In the bitterness of his wounded spirit, 
he said to himself, “ She will cast me off too.” And he re- 
flected that, if she did not believe the testimony against him, 
her whole faith must be upset as his was. To people accus- 
tomed to reason about the forms in which their religious feel- 
ing has incorporated itself, it is difficult to enter into that 
simple, untaught state of mind in which the form and the feel- 
ing have never been severed by an act of reflection. We are 
apt to think it inevitable that a man in Marner’ s position 
should have begun to question the validity of an appeal to the 
divine judgment by drawing lots; but to him this would have 
been an effort of independent thought such as he had never 
known ; and he must have made the effort at a moment when 
all his energies were turned into the anguish of disappointed 


16 


SILAS MARNER. 


faith. If there is an angel who records the sorrows of men 
as well as their sins, he knows how many and deep are the 
sorrows that spring from false ideas for which no man is 
culpable. 

Marner went home, and for a whole day sat alone, stunned 
by despair, without any impulse to go to Sarah and attempt to 
win her belief in his innocence. The second day he took ref- 
uge from benumbing unbelief by getting into his loom and 
working away as usual ; and before many hours were past, the 
minister and one of the deacons came to him with the message 
from Sarah that she held her engagement to him at an end. 
Silas received the message mutely, and then turned away from 
the messengers to work at his loom again. In little more than 
a month from that time, Sarah was married to William Dane; 
and not long afterward it was known to the brethren in Lan- 
tern Yard that Silas Marner had departed from the town. 


CHAPTER II. 

Even people whose lives have been made various by learn- 
ing sometimes find it hard to keep a fast hold on their habit- 
ual views of life, on their faith in the Invisible, nay, on the 
sense that their past joys and sorrows are a real experience, 
when they are suddenly transported to a new land, where the 
beings around them know nothing of their history, and share 
none of their ideas — where their mother earth shows another 
lap, and human life has other forms than those on which their 
souls have been nourished. Minds that have been unhinged 
from their old faith and love, have perhaps sought this Lethe- 
an influence of exile, in which the past becomes dreamy be- 
cause its symbols have all vanished, and the present too is 
dreamy because it is linked with no memories. But even 
their experience may hardly enable them thoroughly to imag- 
ine what was the effect on a simple weaver like Silas Marner, 
when he left his own country and people and came to settle in 
Raveloe. Nothing could be more unlike his native town, set 
within sight of the widespread hillsides, than this low, wood- 


SILAS MARNER. 


17 


ed region, where he felt hidden even from the heavens by the 
screening trees and hedgerows. There was nothing here, when 
he rose in the deep morning quiet and looked out on the dewy 
brambles and rank tufted grass, that seemed to have any rela- 
tion with that life centring in Lantern Yard, which had once 
been to him the altar-place of high dispensations. The white- 
washed walls ; the little pews where well-known figures entered 
with a subdued rustling, and where first one well-known voice 
and then another, pitched in a peculiar key of petition, ut- 
tered phrases at once occult and familiar, like the amulet 
worn on the heart; the pulpit where the minister delivered 
unquestioned doctrine, and swayed to and fro, and handled 
the book in a long-accustomed manner; the very pauses be- 
tween the couplets of the hymn, as it was given out, and the 
recurrent swell of voices in song : these things had been the 
channel of divine influences to Marner — they were the foster- 
ing of his religious emotions — they were Christianity and 
God's kingdom upon earth. A weaver who finds hard words 
in his hymn-book knows nothing of abstractions; as the little 
child knows nothing of parental love, but only knows one face 
and one lap toward which it stretches its arms for refuge and 
nurture. 

And what could be more unlike that Lantern Yard world 
than the world in Raveloe? — orchards looking lazy with neg- 
lected plenty; the large church in the wide churchyard, 
which men gazed at lo.unging at their own doors in service- 
time; the purple-faced farmers jogging along the lanes or 
turning in at the Rainbow ; homesteads, where men supped 
heavily and slept in the light of the evening hearth, and where 
women seemed to be laying up a stock of linen for the life to 
come. There were no lips in Raveloe from which a word could 
fall that would stir Silas Marner's benumbed faith to a sense 
of pain. In the early ages of the world, we know, it was be- 
lieved that each territory was inhabited and ruled by its own 
divinities, so that a man could cross the bordering heights and 
be out of the reach of his native gods, whose presence was 
confined to the streams and the groves and the hills among 
which he had lived from his birth. And poor Silas was 
vaguely conscious of something not unlike the feeling of prim- 
2 


18 


SILAS MARNER. 


itive men, when they fled thus, in fear or in sullenness, from 
the face of an unpropitious deity. It seemed to him that the 
Rower he had vainly trusted in among the streets and at the 
prayer-meetings was very far away from this land in which 
he had taken refuge, where men lived in careless abundance, 
knowing and needing nothing of that trust which, for him, 
had been turned to bitterness. The little light he possessed 
spread its beams so narrowly that frustrated belief was a cur- 
tain broad enough to create for him the blackness of night. 

His first movement after the shock had been to work in his 
loom ; and he went on with this unremittingly, never asking 
himself why, now he was come to Raveloe, he worked far on 
into the night to finish the tale of Mrs. Osgood’s table-linen 
sooner than she expected — without contemplating beforehand 
the money she would put into his hand for the work. He 
seemed to weave, likfc the spider, from pure impulse, without 
reflection. Every man’s work, pursued steadily, tends in this 
way to become an end in itself, and so to bridge over the love- 
less chasms of his life. Silas’s hand satisfied itself with 
throwing the shuttle, and his eye with seeing the little squares 
in the cloth complete themselves under his effort. Then there 
were the calls of hunger; and Silas, in his solitude, had to 
provide his own breakfast, dinner, and supper, to fetch his 
own water from the well, and put his own kettle on the fire; 
and all these immediate promptings helped, along with the 
weaving, to reduce his life to the unquestioning activity of a 
spinning insect. He hated the thought of the past ; there was 
nothing that called out his love and fellowship toward the 
strangers he had come amongst; and the future was all dark, 
for there was no Unseen Love that cared for him. Thought 
was arrested by utter bewilderment, now its old narrow path- 
way was closed, and affection, seemed to have died under the 
bruise that had fallen on its keenest nerves. 

But at last Mrs. Osgood’s table-linen was finished, and 
Silas was paid in gold. His earnings in his native town, 
where he worked for a wholesale dealer, had been after a lower 
rate ; he had been paid weekly, and of his weekly earnings a 
large proportion had gone to objects of piety and charity. 
How, for the first time in his life, he had five bright guineas 


SILAS MARNER. 


19 


put into his hand; no man expected a share of them, and he 
loved no man that he should offer him a share. But what 
were the guineas to him who saw no vista beyond countless 
days of weaving? It was needless for him to ask that, for it 
was pleasant to him to feel them in his palm, and look at their 
bright faces, which were all his own : it was another element 
of life, like the weaving and the satisfaction of hunger, sub- 
sisting quite aloof from the life of belief and love from which 
he had been cut off. The weaver’s hand had known the touch 
of hard- won money even before the palm had grown to its full 
breadth ; for twenty years, mysterious money had stood to him 
as the symbol of earthly good, and the immediate object of 
toil. He had seemed to love it little in the years when every 
penny had its purpose for him; for he loved the purpose then. 
But now, when all purpose was gone, that habit of looking 
toward the money and grasping it with a sense of fulfilled 
effort made a loam that was deep enough for the seeds of de- 
sire ; and as Silas walked homeward across the fields in the 
twilight, he drew out the money and thought it was brighter 
in the gathering gloom. 

About this time an incident happened which seemed to open 
a possibility of some fellowship with his neighbors. One day, 
taking a pair of shoes to be mended, he saw the cobbler’s wife 
seated by the fire, suffering from the terrible symptoms of 
heart disease and dropsy, which he had witnessed as the pre- 
cursors of his mother’s death. He felt a rush of pity at the 
mingled sight and remembrance, and, recalling the relief his 
mother had found from a simple preparation of foxglove, he 
promised Sally Oates to bring her something that would ease 
her, since the doctor did her no good. In this office of char- 
ity, Silas felt, for the first time since he had come to Raveloe, 
a sense of unity between his past and present life, which might 
have been the beginning of his rescue from the insect-like 
existence into which his nature had shrunk. But Sally 
Oates’s disease had raised her into a personage of much inter- 
est and importance among the neighbors, and the fact of her 
having found relief from drinking Silas Marner’s “ stuff ” be- 
came a matter of general discourse. When Doctor Kimble 
gave physic, it was natural that it should have an effect \ but 


20 


SILAS MARNER. 


when a weaver, who came from nobody knew where, worked 
wonders with a bottle of brown waters, the occult character of 
the process was evident. Such a sort of thing had not been 
known since the Wise Woman at Tarley died; and she had 
charms as well as “ stuff ” : everybody went to her when their 
children had fits. Silas Marner must be a person of the same 
sort, for how did he know what would bring back Sally Oates’s 
breath, if he didn’t know a fine sight more than that? The 
Wise Woman had words that she muttered to herself, so that 
you couldn’t hear what they were, and if she tied a bit of red 
thread round the child’s toe the while, it would keep off the 
water in the head. There were women in Raveloe, at that 
present time, who had worn one of the Wise Woman’s little 
bags round their necks, and, in consequence, had never had an 
idiot child, as Ann Coulter had. Silas Marner could very 
likely do as much, and more ; and now it was all clear how he 
should have come from unknown parts, and be so “ comical- 
looking.” But Sally Oates must mind and not tell the doctor, 
for he would be sure to set his face against Marner : he was 
always angry about the Wise Woman, and used to threaten 
fhose who went to her that they should have none of his help 
any more. 

Silas now found himself and his cottage suddenly beset by 
mothers who wanted him to charm away the whooping-cough 
or bring back the milk, and by men who wanted stuff against 
the rheumatics or the knots in the hands; and, to secure 
themselves against a refusal, the applicants brought silver in 
their palms. Silas might have driven a profitable trade in 
charms as well as in his small list of drugs; but money on 
this condition was no temptation to him : he had never known 
an impulse toward falsity, and he drove one after another 
away with growing irritation, for the news of him as a wise 
man had spread even to Tarley, and it was long before people 
ceased to take long walks for the sake of asking his aid. But 
the hope in his wisdom was at length changed into dread, for 
no one believed him when he said he knew no charms and 
could work no cures, and every man and woman who had an 
accident or a new attack after applying to him, set the misfor- 
tune down to Master Marner’ s ill-will and irritated glances. 


SILAS MARKER. 


21 


Thus it came to pass that his movement of pity toward Sally 
Oates, which had given him a transient sense of brotherhood, 
heightened the repulsion between him and his neighbors, and 
made his isolation more complete. 

Gradually the guineas, the crowns, and the half-crowns 
grew to a heap, and Marner drew less and less for his own 
wants, trying to solve the problem of keeping himself strong 
enough to work sixteen hours a day on as small an outlay as 
possible. Have not men, shut up in solitary imprisonment, 
found an interest in marking the moments by straight strokes 
of a certain length on the wall, until the growth of the sum of 
straight strokes, arranged in triangles, has become a master- 
ing purpose? Do we not wile away moments of inanity or 
fatigued waiting by repeating some trivial movement or sound, 
until the repetition has bred a want, which is incipient habit? 
That will help us to understand how the love of accumulating 
money grows an absorbing passion in men whose imaginations, 
even in the very beginning of their hoard, showed them no 
purpose beyond it. Marner wanted the heaps of ten to grow 
into a square, and then into a larger square ; and every added 
guinea, while it was itself a satisfaction, bred a new desire. 
In this strange world, made a hopeless riddle to him, he 
might, if he had had a less intense nature, have sat weaving, 
weaving — looking toward the end of his pattern, or toward the 
end of his web, till he forgot the riddle, and everything else 
but his immediate sensations; but the money had come to 
mark off his weaving into periods, and the money not only 
grew, but it remained with him. He began to think it was 
conscious of him, as his loom was, and he would on no account 
have exchanged those coins, which had become his familiars, 
for other coins with unknown faces. He handled them, he 
counted them, till their form and color were like the satisfac- 
tion of a thirst to him ; but it was only in the night, when his 
work was done, that he drew them out to enjoy their compan- 
ionship. He had taken up some bricks in his floor underneath 
his loom, and here he had made a hole in which he set the iron 
pot that contained his guineas and silver coins, covering the 
bricks with sand whenever he replaced them. Not that the 
idea of being robbed presented itself often or strongly to his 


22 


SILAS MARNER. 


mind: hoarding was common in country districts in those 
days ; there were old laborers in the parish of Raveloe who 
were known to have their savings by them, probably inside 
their flock-beds ; but their rustic neighbors, though not all of 
them as honest as their ancestors in the days of King Alfred, 
had not imaginations bold enough to lay a plan of burglary. 
How could they have spent the money in their own village 
without betraying themselves? They would be obliged to 
“run away 77 — a course as dark and dubious as a balloon jour- 
ney. 

So, year after year, Silas Marner had lived in this solitude, 
his guineas rising in the iron pot, and his life narrowing and 
hardening itself more and more into a mere pulsation of desire 
and satisfaction that had no relation to any other being. His 
life had reduced itself to the functions of weaving and hoard- 
ing, without any contemplation of an end toward which the 
functions tended. The same sort of process has perhaps been 
undergone by wiser men, when they have been cut off from 
faith and love — only, instead of a loom and a heap of guineas, 
they have had some erudite research, some ingenious project, 
or some well-knit theory. Strangely Marner 7 s face and figure 
shrank and bent themselves into a constant mechanical rela- 
tion to the objects of his life, so that he produced the same 
sort of impression as a handle or a crooked tube, which has no 
meaning standing apart. The prominent eyes that used to 
look trusting and dreamy now looked as if they had been 
made to see only one kind of thing that was very small, like 
tiny grain, for which they hunted everywhere : and he was so 
withered and yellow that, though he was not yet forty, the 
children always called him “Old Master Marner. 77 

Yet even in this stage of withering a little incident hap- 
pened which showed that the sap of affection was not all 
gone. It was one of his daily tasks to fetch his water from a 
well a couple of fields off, and for this purpose, ever since he 
came to Raveloe, he had had a brown earthenware pot, w’hich 
he held as his most precious utensil among the very few con- 
veniences he had granted himself. It had been his compan- 
ion for twelve years, always standing on the same spot, 
always lending its handle to him in the early morning, so that 


SILAS MARNER. 


23 


its form had an expression for him of willing helpfulness, and 
the impress of its handle on his palm gave a satisfaction min- 
gled with that of having the fresh clear water. One day as 
he was returning from the well, he stumbled against the step 
of the stile, and his brown pot, falling with force against the 
stones that overarched the ditch below him, was broken in 
three pieces. Silas picked up the pieces and carried them 
home with grief in his heart. The brown pot could never be 
of use to him any more, but he stuck the bits together and 
propped the ruin in its old place for a memorial. 

This is the history of Silas Marner, until the fifteenth year 
after he came to Raveloe. The livelong day he sat in his 
loom, his ear filled with its monotony, his eyes bent close 
down on the slow growth of sameness in the brownish web, 
his muscles moving with such even repetition that their pause 
seemed almost as much a constraint as the holding of his 
breath. But at night came his revelry : at night he closed his 
shutters, and made fast his doors, and drew forth his gold. 
Long ago the heap of coins had become too large for the iron 
pot to hold them, and he had made for them two thick leather 
bags, which wasted no room in their resting-place, but lent 
themselves flexibly to every corner. How the guineas shone 
as they came pouring out of the dark leather mouths! The 
silver bore no large proportion in amount to the gold, because 
the long pieces of linen which formed his chief work were 
always partly paid for in gold, and out of the silver he sup- 
plied his own bodily wants, choosing always the shillings and 
sixpences to spend in this way. He loved the guineas best, 
but he would not change the silver — the crowns and half- 
crowns that were his own earnings, begotten by his labor ; he 
loved them all. He spread them out in heaps and bathed his 
hands in them ; then he counted them and set them up in reg- 
ular piles, and felt their rounded outline between his thumb 
and fingers, and thought fondly of the guineas that were only 
half earned by the work in his loom, as if they had been un- 
born children — thought of the guineas that were coming slowly 
through the coming years, through all his life, which spread 
far away before him, the end quite hidden by countless days 
of weaving, No wonder his thoughts were still with his Loom 


24 


SILAS MARKER. 


and his money when he made his journeys through the fields 
and the lanes to fetch and carry home his work, so that his 
steps never wandered to the hedge-banks and the laneside in 
search of the once familiar herbs : these too belonged to the 
past, from which his life had shrunk away, like a rivulet 
that has sunk far down from the grassy fringe of its old 
breadth into a little shivering thread, that cuts a groove for 
itself in the barren sand. 

But about the Christmas of that fifteenth year a second 
great change came over Marner’s life, and his history became 
blent in a singular manner with the life of his neighbors. 


CHAPTER III. 

The greatest man in Raveloe was Squire Cass, who lived in 
the large red house with the handsome flight of stone steps in 
front and the high stables behind it, nearly opposite the 
church. He was only one among several landed parishioners, 
but he alone was honored with the title of Squire ; for though 
Mr. Osgood’s family was also understood to be of timeless 
origin — the Raveloe imagination having never ventured back 
to that fearful blank when there were no Osgoods — still, he 
merely owned the farm he occupied ; whereas Squire Cass had 
a tenant or two, who complained of the game to him quite as 
if he had been a lord. 

It was still that glorious war-time which was felt to be a 
peculiar favor of Providence toward the landed interest, and 
the fall of prices had not yet come to carry the race of small 
squires and yeomen down that road to ruin for which extrava- 
gant habits and bad husbandry were plentifully anointing their 
wheels. I am speaking now in relation to Raveloe and the 
parishes that resembled it; for our old-fashioned country life 
had many different aspects, as all life must have when it is 
spread over a various surface, and breathed on variously by 
multitudinous currents, from the winds of heaven to the 
thoughts of men, which are forever moving and crossing each 
other with incalculable results. Raveloe lay low among the 


SILAS MARNER. 


25 


bushy trees and the rutted lanes, aloof from the currents of 
industrial energy and Puritan earnestness : the rich ate and 
drank freely, accepting gout and apoplexy as things that ran 
mysteriously in respectable families, and the poor thought that 
the rich were entirely in the right of it to lead a jolly life; 
besides, their feasting caused a multiplication of orts, which 
were the heirlooms of the poor. Betty Jay scented the boil- 
ing of Squire Cass’s hams, but her longing was arrested by the 
unctuous liquor in which they were boiled ; and when the sea- 
sons brought round the great merry-makings, they were re- 
garded on all hands as a fine thing for the poor. For the 
Raveloe feasts were like the rounds of beef and the barrels of 
ale — they were on a large scale, and lasted a good while, espe- 
cially in the winter-time. After ladies had packed up their 
best gowns and top-knots in bandboxes, and had incurred the 
risk of fording streams on pillions with the precious burden in 
rainy or snowy weather, when there was no knowing how high 
the water would rise, it was not to be supposed that they 
looked forward to a brief pleasure. On this ground it was 
always contrived in the dark seasons, when there was little 
work to be done, and the hours were long, that several neigh- 
bors should keep open house in succession. So soon as Squire 
Cass’s standing dishes diminished in plenty and freshness, his 
guests had nothing to do but to walk a little higher up the vil- 
lage to Mr. Osgood’s, at the Orchards, and they found hams 
and chines uncut, pork-pies with the scent of the fire in them, 
spun butter in all its freshness — everything, in fact, that appe- 
tites at leisure could desire, in perhaps greater perfection, 
though not in greater abundance, than at Squire Cass’s. 

For the Squire’s wife had died long ago, and the Red House 
was without that presence of the wife and mother which is the 
fountain of wholesome love and fear in parlor and kitchen ; 
and this helped to account not only for there being more pro- 
fusion than finished excellence in the holiday provisions, but 
also for the frequency with which the proud Squire conde- 
scended to preside in the parlor of the Rainbow rather than 
under the shadow of his own dark wainscot; perhaps, also, 
for the fact that his sons had turned out rather ill. Raveloe 
was not a place where moral censure was severe^ but it was 


26 


SILAS MARNER. 


thought a weakness in the Squire that he had kept all his sons 
at home in idleness ; and though some leisure was to be allowed 
to young men whose fathers could afford it, people shook their 
heads at the courses of the second son, Dunstan, commonly 
called Dunsey Cass, whose taste for swopping and betting 
might turn out to be a sowing of something worse than wild 
oats. To be sure, the neighbors said, it was no matter what 
became of Dunsey — a spiteful jeering fellow, who seemed to 
enjoy his drink the more when other people went dry — always 
provided that his doings did not bring trouble on a family like 
Squire Cass’s, with a monument in the church, and tankards 
older than King George. But it would be a thousand pities if 
Mr. Godfrey, the eldest, a fine open-faced good-natured young 
man who was to come into the land some day, should take to 
going along the same road with his brother, as he had seemed 
to do of late. If he went on in that way, he would lose Miss 
Nancy Lammeter; for it was well known that she had looked 
very shyly on him ever since last Whitsuntide twelvemonth, 
when there was so much talk about his being away from home 
days and days together. There was something wrong, more 
than common — that was quite clear; for Mr. Godfrey didn’t 
look half so fresh-colored and open as he used to do. At one 
time everybody was saying, What a handsome couple he and 
Miss Nancy Lammeter would make! and if she could come to 
be mistress at the Red House, there would be a fine change, 
for the Lammeters had been brought up in that way that they 
never suffered a pinch of salt to be wasted, and yet everybody 
in their household had of the best, according to his place. 
Such a daughter-in-law would be a saving to the old Squire, if 
she never brought a penny to her fortune; for it was to be 
feared that, notwithstanding his incomings, there were more 
holes in his pocket than the one where he put his own hand in. 
But if Mr. Godfrey didn’t turn over a new leaf, he might say 
“ Good-by ” to Miss Nancy Lammeter. 

It was the once hopeful Godfrey who was standing, with 
his hands in his side pockets and his back to the fire, in the 
dark wainscoted parlor one late November afternoon in that 
fifteenth year of Silas Marner’s life at Raveloe. The fading 
gray light fell dimly on the walls decorated with guns, whips, 


SILAS MARNER. 


27 


and foxes* brushes, on coats and hats flung on the chairs, on 
tankards sending forth a scent of flat ale, and on a half- 
choked fire, with pipes propped up in the chimney-corners : 
signs of a domestic life destitute of any hallowing charm, with 
which the look of gloomy vexation on Godfrey’s blond face 
was in sad accordance. He seemed to be waiting and listen- 
ing for some one’s approach, and presently the sound of a 
heavy step, with an accompanying whistle, was heard across 
the large empty entrance-hall. 

The door opened, and a thick-set, heavy-looking young man 
entered, with the flushed face and the gratuitously elated 
bearing which mark the first stage of intoxication. It was 
Dunsey, and at the sight of him Godfrey’s face parted with 
some of its gloom to take on the more active expression of 
hatred. The handsome brown spaniel that lay on the hearth 
retreated under the chair in the chimney-corner. 

“Well, Master Godfrey, what do you want with me?” said 
Dunsey, in a mocking tone. “You’re my elders and bet- 
ters, you know; I was obliged to come when you sent for 
me.” 

“ Why, this is what I want — and just shake yourself sober 
and listen, will you? ” said Godfrey, savagely. He had him- 
self been drinking more than was good for him, trying to turn 
his gloom into uncalculating anger. “ I want to tell you, I 
must hand over that rent of Fowler’s to the Squire, or else tell 
him I gave it you; for he’s threatening to distrain for it, and 
it’ll all be out soon, whether I tell him or not. He said, just 
now, before he went out, he should send word to Cox to dis- 
train, if Fowler didn’t come and pay up his arrears this week. 
The Squire’s short o’ cash, and in no humor to stand any non- 
sense; and you know what he threatened, if ever he found 
you making away with his money again. So, see and get the 
money, and pretty quickly, will you?” 

“ Oh ! ” said Dunsey, sneeringly, coming nearer to his broth- 
er and looking in his face. “ Suppose, now, you get the 
money yourself, and save me the trouble, eh? Since you was 
so kind as to hand it over to me, you’ll not refuse me the 
kindness to pay it back for me : it was your brotherly love 
made you do it, you know.” 


28 


SILAS MARKER 


Godfrey bit his lips and clinched his fist. “Don’t come 
near me with that look, else I’ll knock you down.” 

“Oh no, you won’t,” said Dunsey, turning away on his 
heel, however. “ Because I’m such a good-natured brother, 
you know. 1 might get you turned out of house and home, 
and cut off with a shilling any day. I might tell the Squire 
how his handsome son was married to that nice young woman, 
Molly Farren, and was very unhappy because he couldn’t live 
with his drunken wife, and I should slip into your place as 
comfortable as could be. But, you see, I don’t do it — I’m so 
easy and good-natured. You’ll take any trouble for me. 
You’ll get the hundred pounds for me — I know you will.” 

“ How can I get the money? ” said Godfrey, quivering. “ I 
haven’t a shilling to bless myself with. And it’s a lie that 
you’d slip into my place: you’d get yourself turned out too, 
that’s all. For if you begin telling tales, I’ll follow. Bob’s 
my father’s favorite — you know that very well. He’d only 
think himself well rid of you.” 

“Never mind,” said Dunsey, nodding his head sideways as 
he looked out of the window. “ It ’ud be very pleasant to me 
to go in your compauy — you’re such a handsome brother, and 
we’ve always been so fond of quarrelling with one another, I 
shouldn’t know what to do without you. But you’d like bet- 
ter for us both to stay at home together; I know you would. 
So you’ll manage to get that little sum o’ money, and I’ll bid 
you good-by, though I’m sorry to part.” 

Dunstan was moving off, but Godfrey rushed after him and 
seized him by the arm, saying, with an oath, — 

“ I tell you, I have no money : I can get no money.” 

“Borrow of old Kimble.” 

“ I tell you, he won’t lend me any more, and I sha’n’t ask 
him.” 

“ Well, then, sell Wildfire.” 

“ Yes, that’s easy talking. I must have the money directly.” 

“Well, you’ve only got to ride him to the hunt to-morrow. 
There’ll be Bryce and Keating there, for sure. You’ll get 
more bids than one.” 

“ I dare say, and get back home at eight o’clock, splashed 
up to the chin. I’m going to Mrs. Osgood’s birthday dance.” 


SILAS MARNER. 


29 


“ Oho ! ” said Dunsey, turning his head on one side, and 
trying to speak in a small mincing treble. “And there’s 
sweet Miss Nancy coming; and we shall dance with her, and 
promise never to be naughty again, and be taken into favor, 
and ” 

“ Hold your tongue about Miss Nancy, you fool,” said God- 
frey, turning red, “else I’ll throttle you.” 

“What for?” said Dunsey, still in an artificial tone, but 
taking a whip from the table and beating the butt-end of it on 
his palm. “You’ve a very good chance. I’d advise you to 
creep up her sleeve again: it ’ud be saving time, if Molly 
should happen to take a drop too much laudanum some day, 
and make a widower of you. Miss Nancy wouldn’t mind 
being a second, if she didn’t know it. And you’ve got a 
good-natured brother, who’ll keep your secret well, because 
you’ll be so very obliging to him.” 

“I’ll tell you what it is,” said Godfrey, quivering, and pale 
again, “my patience is pretty near at an end. If you’d a lit- 
tle more sharpness in you, you might know that you may urge 
a man a bit too far, and make one leap as easy as another. I 
don’t know but what it is so now: I may as well tell the 
Squire everything myself — I should get you off my back, if I 
got nothing else. And, after all, he’ll know some time. 
She’s been threatening to come herself and tell him. So, 
don’t flatter yourself that your secrecy’s worth any price you 
choose to ask. You drain me of money till I have got noth- 
ing to pacify her with, and she’ll do as she threatens some 
day. It’s all one. I’ll tell my father everything myself, and 
you may go to the devil.” 

Dunsey perceived that he had overshot his mark, and that 
there was a point at which even the hesitating Godfrey might 
be driven into decision. But he said, with an air of uncon- 
cern, — 

“ As you please ; but I’ll have a draught of ale first.” And, 
ringing the bell, he threw himself across two chairs, and be- 
gan to rap the window-seat with the handle of his whip. 

Godfrey stood, still with his back to the fire, uneasily mov- 
ing his fingers among the contents of his side pockets, and 
looking at the floor. That big muscular frame of his held 


30 


SILAS MARNER. 


plenty of animal courage, but helped him to no decision when 
the dangers to be braved were such as could neither be knocked 
down nor throttled. His natural irresolution and moral cowar- 
dice were exaggerated by a position in which dreaded conse- 
quences seemed to press equally on all sides, and his irritation 
had no sooner provoked him to defy Dunstan and anticipate 
all possible betrayals than the miseries he must bring on 
himself by such a step seemed more unendurable to him than 
the present evil. The results of confession were not contin- 
gent, they were certain; whereas betrayal was not certain. 
From the near vision of that certainty he fell back on suspense 
and vacillation with a sense of repose. The disinherited son 
of a small squire, equally disinclined to dig and to beg, was 
almost as helpless as an uprooted tree, which, by the favor of 
earth and sky, has grown to a handsome bulk on the spot 
where it first shot upward. Perhaps it would have been pos- 
sible to think of digging with some cheerfulness if Nancy 
Lammeter were to be won on those terms ; but, since he must 
irrevocably lose her as well as the inheritance, and must break 
every tie but the one that degraded him and left him without 
motive for trying to recover his better self, he could imagine 
no future for himself on the other side of confession but that 
of “ ’listing for a soldier ” — the most desperate step, short of 
suicide, in the eyes of respectable families. No! he would 
rather trust to casualties than to his own resolve — rather go on 
sitting at the feast, and sipping the wine he loved, though 
with the sword hanging over him and terror in his heart, than 
rush away into the cold darkness where there was no pleasure 
left. The utmost concession to Dunstan about the horse be- 
gan to seem easy, compared with the fulfilment of his own 
threat. But his pride would not let him recommence the con- 
versation otherwise than by continuing the quarrel. Dunstan 
was waiting for this, and took his ale in shorter draughts than 
usual. 

“ IPs just like you,” Godfrey burst out, in a bitter tone, “ to 
talk about my selling Wildfire in that cool way — the last thing 
I’ve got to call my own, and the best bit of horse-flesh I ever 
had in my life. And if you’d got a spark of pride in you, 
you’d be ashamed to see the stables emptied, and everybody 


SILAS MARNER. 


31 


sneering about it. But it’s my belief you’d sell yourself, if it 
was only for the pleasure of making somebody feel he’d got a 
bad bargain.” 

“ Ay, ay,” said Dunstan, very placably, “you do me justice, 
I see. You know I’m a jewel for ’ticing people into bargains. 
For which reason I advise you to let me sell Wildfire. I’d 
ride him to the hunt to-morrow for you, with pleasure. I 
shouldn’t look so handsome as you in the saddle, but it’s the 
horse they’ll bid for, and not the rider.” 

“ Yes, I dare say — trust my horse to you! ” 

“As you please,” said Dunstan, rapping the window-seat 
again with an air of great unconcern. “ It’ s you have got to 
pay Fowler’s money; it’s none of my business. You received 
the money from him when you went to Bramcote, and you told 
the Squire it wasn’t paid. I’d nothing to do with that; you 
choso to be so obliging as to give it me, that was all. If you 
don’t want to pay the money, let it alone; it’s all one to me. 
But I was willing to accommodate you by undertaking to sell 
the horse, seeing it’s not convenient to you to go so far to- 
morrow.” 

Godfrey was silent for some moments. He would have 
liked to spring on Dunstan, wrench the whip from his hand, 
and flog him to within an inch of his life ; and no bodily fear 
could have deterred him; but he was mastered by another 
sort of fear, which was fed by feelings stronger even than his 
resentment. When he spoke again it was in a half-concilia- 
tory tone. 

“ Well, you mean no nonsense about the horse, eh? You’ll 
sell him all fair, and hand over the money? If you don’t, 
you know, everything ’ull go to smash, for I’ve got nothing 
else to trust to. And you’ll have less pleasure in pulling the 
house over my head, when your own skull’s to be broken too.” 

“Ay, ay,” said Dunstan, rising; “all right. I thought 
you’d come round. I’m the fellow to bring old Bryce up to 
the scratch. I’ll get you a hundred and twenty for him, if I 
get you a penny. ” 

“ But it’ll perhaps rain cats and dogs to-morrow, as it did 
yesterday, and then you can’t go,” said Godfrey, hardly 
knowing whether he wished for that obstacle or not. 


32 


SILAS MARNER. 


“ Not it, ” said Dnnstan. “ I ’m always lucky in my weather. 
It might rain if yon wanted to go yourself. You never hold 
trumps, you know — I always do. You’ve got the beauty, you 
see, and I’ve got the luck, so you must keep me by you for 
your crooked sixpence; you’ll ne-\e r get along without me.” 

“ Confound you, hold your tongue ! ” said Godfrey, impetu- 
ously. “ And take care to keep sober to-morrow, else you’ll 
get pitched on your head coming home, and Wildfire might be 
the worse for it.” 

“Make your tender heart easy,” said Dunstan, opening the 
door. “ You never knew me see double when I’d got a bargain 
to make; it ’ud spoil the fun. Besides, whenever I fall, I’m 
warranted to fall on my legs.” 

With that, Dunstan slammed the door behind him, and left 
Godfrey to that bitter rumination on his personal circum- 
stances which was now unbroken from day to day save by the 
excitement of sporting, drinking, card-playing, or the rarer 
and less oblivious pleasure of seeing Miss Nancy Lammeter. 
The subtle and varied pains springing from the higher sensi- 
bility that accompanies higher culture are perhaps less pitia- 
ble than that dreary absence of impersonal enjoyment and con- 
solation which leaves ruder minds to the perpetual urgent 
companionship of their own griefs and discontents. The lives 
of those rural forefathers, whom we are apt to think very pro- 
saic figures — men whose only work was to ride round their 
land, getting heavier and heavier in their saddles, and who 
passed the rest of their days in the half -listless gratification of 
senses dulled by monotony — had a certain pathos in them 
nevertheless. Calamities came to them too, and their early 
errors carried hard consequences : perhaps the love of some 
sweet maiden, the image of purity, order, and calm, had 
opened their eyes to the vision of a life in which the days 
would not seem too long, even without rioting ; but the maiden 
was lost, and the vision passed away, and then what was left 
to them, especially when they had become too heavy for the 
hunt, or for carrying a gun over the furrows, but to drink and 
get merry, or to drink and get angry, so that they might be 
independent of variety, and say over again with eager empha- 
sis the things they had said already any time that twelve- 


SILAS MARNER. 


33 


month? Assuredly, among these flushed and dull-eyed men 
there were some whom — thanks to their native human -kindness 
— even riot could never drive into brutality ; men who, when 
their cheeks were fresh, had felt the keen point of sorrow or 
remorse, had been pierced by the reeds they leaned on, or had 
lightly put their limbs in fetters from which no struggle could 
loose them ; and under these sad circumstances, common to us 
all, their thoughts could find no resting-place outside the ever- 
trodden round of their own petty history. 

That, at least, was the condition of Godfrey Cass in this six- 
and-twentieth year of his life. A movement of compunction, 
helped by those small indefinable influences which every per- 
sonal relation exerts on a pliant nature, had urged him into a 
secret marriage, which was a blight on his life. It was an 
ugly story of low passion, delusion, and waking from delusion, 
which needs not to be dragged from the privacy of Godfrey’s 
bitter memory. He had long known that the delusion was 
partly due to a trap laid for him by Dunstan, who saw in his 
brother’s degrading marriage the means of gratifying at once 
his jealous hate and his cupidity. And if Godfrey could have 
felt himself simply a victim, the iron bit that destiny had put 
into his mouth would have chafed him less intolerably. If 
the curses he muttered half aloud when he was alone had had 
no other object than Dunstan’ s diabolical cunning, he might 
have shrunk less from the consequences of avowal. But he 
had something else to curse — his own vicious folly, which now 
seemed as mad and unaccountable to him as almost all our 
follies and vices do when their promptings have long passed 
away. For four years he had thought of Nancy Lammeter, 
and wooed her with tacit patient worship, as the woman who 
made him think of the future with joy : she would be his wife, 
and would make home lovely to him, as his father’s home had 
never been ; and it would be easy, when she was always near, 
to shake off those foolish habits that were no pleasures, but 
only a feverish way of annulling vacancy. Godfrey’s was an 
essentially domestic nature, bred up in a home where the 
hearth had no smiles, and where the daily habits were not 
chastised by the presence of household order. His easy dis- 
position made him fall in unresistingly with the family 
3 


34 


SILAS MARNER. 


courses, but the need of some tender permanent affection, the 
longing for some influence that would make the good he pre- 
ferred easy to pursue, caused the neatness, purity, and liberal 
orderliness of the Lammeter household, sunned by the smile 
of Nancy, to seem like those fresh bright hours of the morn- 
ing when temptations go to sleep and leave the ear open to 
the voice of the good angel, inviting to industry, sobriety, and 
peace. And yet the hope of this paradise had not been 
enough to save him from a course which shut him out of it 
forever. Instead of keeping fast hold of the strong silken 
rope by which Nancy would have drawn him safe to the green 
banks where it was easy to step firmly, he had let himself be 
dragged back into mud and slime, in which it was useless to 
struggle. He had made ties for himself which robbed him of 
all wholesome motive and were a constant exasperation. 

Still, there was one position worse than the present : it was 
the position he would be in when the ugly secret was dis- 
closed ; and the desire that continually* triumphed over every 
other was that of warding off the evil day, when he would 
have to bear the consequences of his father’s violent resent- 
ment for the wound inflicted on his family pride — would have, 
perhaps, to turn his back on that hereditary ease and dignity 
which, after all, was a sort of reason for living, and would 
carry with him the certainty that he was banished forever from 
the sight and esteem of Nancy Lammeter. The longer the 
interval, the more chance there was of deliverance from some, 
at least, of the hateful consequences to which he had sold 
himself; the more opportunities remained for him to snatch 
the strange gratification of seeing Nancy, and gathering some 
faint indications of her lingering regard. Toward this gratifi- 
cation he was impelled, fitfully, every now and then, after 
having passed weeks in which he had avoided her as the far- 
off bright-winged prize that only made him spring forward 
and find his chain all the more galling. One of those fits of 
yearning was on him now, and it would have been strong 
enough to have persuaded him to trust Wildfire to Dunstan 
rather than disappoint the yearning, even if he had not had 
another reason for his disinclination toward the morrow’s hunt. 
That other reason was the fact that the morning’s meet was 


SILAS MARNER. 


35 


near Batherley, the market-town where the unhappy woman 
lived, whose image became more odious to him every day; and 
to his thought the whole vicinage was haunted by her. The 
yoke a man creates for himself by wrong-doing will breed hate 
in the kindliest nature ; and the good-humored, affectionate- 
hearted Godfrey Cass was fast becoming a bitter man, visited 
by cruel wishes, that seemed to enter, and depart, and enter 
again, like demons who had found in him a ready-garnished 
home. 

What was he to do this evening to pass the time? He might 
as well go to the Rainbow, and hear the talk about the cock- 
fighting : everybody was there, and what else was there to be 
done? Though, for his own part, he did not care a button 
for cock-fighting. Snuff, the brown spaniel, who had placed 
herself in front of him, and had been watching him for some 
time, now jumped up in impatience for the expected caress. 
But Godfrey thrust her away without looking at her, and left 
the room, followed humbly by the unresenting Snuff — perhaps 
because she saw no other career open to her. 


CHAPTER IV 

Dunstan Cass, setting off in the raw morning, at the judi- 
ciously quiet pace of a man who is obliged to ride to cover on 
his hunter, had to take his way along the lane which, at its 
farther extremity, passed by the piece of unenclosed ground 
called the Stone-pit, where stood the cottage, once a stone- 
cutter’s shed, now for fifteen years inhabited by Silas Marner. 
The spot looked very dreary at this season, with the moist 
trodden clay about it, and the red, muddy water high up in 
the deserted quarry. That was Dunstan’s first thought as he 
approached it; the second was that the old fool of a weaver, 
whose loom he heard rattling already, had a great deal of 
money hidden somewhere. How was it that he, Dunstan 
Cass, who had often heard talk of Marner’ s miserliness, had 
never thought of suggesting to Godfrey that he should frighten 
or persuade the old fellow into lending the money on the excel- 
lent security of the young Squire’s prospects? The resource 


36 


SILAS MARNER. 


occurred to him now as so easy and agreeable, especially as 
Marner’s hoard was likely to be large enough to leave Godfrey 
a handsome surplus beyond his immediate needs, and enable 
him to accommodate his faithful brother, that he had almost 
turned the horse’s head toward home again. Godfrey would 
be ready enough to accept the suggestion : he would snatch 
eagerly at a plan that might save him from parting with 
Wildfire. But when Dunstan’s meditation reached this 
point, the inclination to go on grew strong and prevailed. 
He didn’t want to give Godfrey that pleasure : he preferred 
that Master Godfrey should be vexed. Moreover, Dunstan 
enjoyed the self-important consciousness of having a horse to 
sell, and the opportunity of driving a bargain, swaggering, 
and possibly taking somebody in. He might have all the sat- 
isfaction attendant on selling his brother’s horse, and not the 
less have the further satisfaction of setting Godfrey to borrow 
Marner’s money. So he rode on to cover. 

Bryce and Keating were there, as Dunstan was quite sure 
they would be — he was such a lucky fellow. 

“ Heyday! ” said Bryce, who had long had his' eye on Wild- 
fire, “ you’re on your brother’s horse to-day: how’s that?” 

“Oh, I’ve swopped with him,” said Dunstan, whose de- 
light in lying, grandly independent of utility, was not to be 
diminished by the likelihood that his hearer would not believe 
him — “ Wildfire’s mine now.” 

“ What! has he swopped with you for that big-boned hack 
of yours?” said Bryce, quite aware that he should get an- 
other lie in answer. 

“ Oh, there was a little account between us, ” said Dunsey, 
carelessly, “ and Wildfire made it even. I accommodated him 
by taking the horse, though it was against my will, for I’d got 
an itch for a mare o’ Jortin’s— as rare a bit o’ blood as ever 
you threw your leg across. But I shall keep Wildfire, now 
I’ve got him, though I’d a bid of a hundred and fifty for him 
the other day, from a man over at Flitton — he’s buying for 
Lord Cromleck — a fellow with a cast in his eye, and a green 
waistcoat. But I mean to stick to Wildfire: I sha’n’t get a 
better at a fence in a hurry. The mare’s got more blood, but 
she’s a bit too weak in the hindquarters.” 


SILAS MARNER. 


37 


Bryce of course divined that Dunstan wanted to sell the 
horse, and Dunstan knew that he divined it (horse-dealing is 
only one of many human transactions carried on in this inge- 
nious manner) ; and they both considered that the bargain was 
in its first stage, when Bryce replied, ironically, — 

“I wonder. at that, now; I wonder you mean to keep him; 
for I never heard of a man who didn’t want to sell his horse 
getting a bid of half as much again as the horse was worth. 
You’ll be lucky if you get a hundred.” 

Keating rode up now, and the transaction became more 
complicated. It ended in the purchase of the horse by Bryce 
for a hundred and twenty, to be paid on the delivery of Wild- 
fire, safe and sound, at the Batherley stables. It did occur 
to Dunsey that it might be wise for him to give up the day’s 
hunting, proceed at once to Batherley, and, having waited for 
Bryce’s return, hire a horse to carry him home with the money 
in his pocket. But the inclination for a run, encouraged by 
confidence in his luck, and by a draught of brandy from his 
pocket-pistol at the conclusion of the bargain, was not easy to 
overcome, especially with a horse under him that would take 
the fences to the admiration of the field. Dunstan, however, 
took one fence too many, and got his horse pierced with a 
hedge-stake. His own ill-favored person, which was quite 
unmarketable, escaped without injury; but poor Wildfire, 
unconscious of his price, turned on his flank and painfully 
panted his last. It happened that Dunstan, a short time be- 
fore, having had to get down to arrange his stirrup, had mut- 
tered a good many curses at this interruption, which had 
thrown him in the rear of the hunt near the moment of glory, 
and under this exasperation had taken the fences more blindly. 
He would soon have been up with the hounds again, when the 
fatal accident happened; and hence he was between eager 
riders in advance, not troubling themselves about what hap- 
pened behind them, and far-off stragglers, who were as likely 
as not to pass quite aloof from the line of road in which Wild- 
fire had fallen. Dunstan, whose nature it was to care more 
for immediate annoyances than for remote consequences, no 
sooner recovered his legs, and saw that it was all over with 
Wildfire, than he felt a satisfaction at the absence of witnesses 


38 


SILAS MARNER. 


to a position which no swaggering could make enviable. Re- 
inforcing himself, after his shake, with a little brandy and 
much swearing, he walked as fast as he could to a coppice on 
his right hand, through which it occurred to him that he could 
make his way to Batherley without danger of encountering any 
member of the hunt. His first intention was to hire a horse 
there and ride home forthwith, for to walk many miles with- 
out a gun in his hand and along an ordinary road was as much 
out of the question to him as to other spirited young men of 
his kind. He did not much mind about taking the bad news 
to Godfrey, for he had to offer him at the same time the re- 
source of Marner’s money; and if Godfrey kicked, as he 
always did, at the notion of making a fresh debt from which 
he himself got the smallest share of advantage, why, he 
wouldn’t kick long : Dunstan felt sure he could worry God- 
frey into anything. The idea of Marner’s money kept grow- 
ing in vividness, now the want of it had become immediate; 
the prospect of having to make his appearance with the muddy 
boots of a pedestrian at Batherley, and to encounter the grin- 
ning queries of stablemen, stood unpleasantly in the way of 
his impatience to be back at Raveloe and carry out his felici- 
tous plan; and a casual visitation of his waistcoat pocket, as 
he was ruminating, awakened his memory to the fact that the 
two or three small coins his forefinger encountered there were 
of too pale a color to cover that small debt, without payment of 
which the stable-keeper had declared he would never do any 
more business with Dunsey Cass. After all, according to the 
direction in which the run had brought him, he was not so 
very much farther from home than he was from Batherley ; 
but Dunsey, not being remarkable for clearness of head, was 
only led to this conclusion by the gradual perception that 
there were other reasons for choosing the unprecedented 
course of walking home. It was now nearly four o’clock, and 
a mist was gathering: the sooner he got into the road the 
better. He remembered having crossed the road and seen the 
finger-post only a little while before Wildfire broke down; so, 
buttoning his coat, twisting the lash of his hunting-whip com- 
pactly round the handle, and rapping the tops of his boots 
with a self-possessed air, as if to assure himself that he was 


SILAS MARKER. 


39 


not at all taken by surprise, he set off with the sense that he 
was undertaking a remarkable feat of bodily exertion, which 
somehow and at some time he should be able to dress up and 
magnify to the admiration of a select circle at the Rainbow. 
When a young gentleman like Dunsey is reduced to so excep- 
tional a mode of locomotion as walking, a whip in his hand is 
a desirable corrective to a too bewildering dreamy sense of 
unwontedness in his position ; and Dunstan, as he went along 
through the gathering mist, was always rapping his whip 
somewhere. It was Godfrey’s whip, which he had chosen 
to take without leave because it had a gold handle; of course 
no one could see, when Dunstan held it, that the name God- 
frey Cass was cut in deep letters on that gold handle — they 
could only see that it was a very handsome whip. Dunsey 
was not without fear that he might meet some acquaintance in 
whose eyes he would cut a pitiable figure, for mist is no screen 
when people get close to each other ; but when he at last found 
himself in the well-known Raveloe lanes without having met 
a soul, he silently remarked that that was part of his usual 
good luck. But now the mist, helped by the evening dark- 
ness, was more of a screen than he desired, for it hid the ruts 
into which his feet were liable to slip — hid everything, so that 
he had to guide his steps by dragging his whip along the low 
bushes in advance of the hedgerow. He must soon, he 
thought, be getting near the opening at the Stone-pits: he 
should find it out by the break in the hedgerow. He found it 
out, however, by another circumstance which he had not ex- 
pected — namely, by certain gleams of light, which he pres- 
ently guessed to proceed from Silas Marner’s cottage. The 
cottage and the money hidden within it had been in his mind 
continually during his walk, and he had been imagining ways 
of cajoling and tempting the weaver to part with the imme- 
diate possession of his money for the sake of receiving interest. 
Dunstan felt as if there must be a little frightening added to 
the cajolery, for his own arithmetical convictions were not 
clear enough to afford him any forcible demonstration as to 
the advantages of interest ; and as for security, he regarded it 
vaguely as a means of cheating a man by making him believe 
that he would be paid. Altogether, the operation on the mi- 


40 


SILAS MARNER. 


ser’s mind was a task that Godfrey would be sure to hand over 
to his more daring and cunning brother : Dunstan had made 
up his mind to that; and by the time he saw the light gleam- 
ing through the chinks of Marner’ s shutters, the idea of a dia- 
logue with the weaver had become so familiar to him that it 
occurred to him as quite a natural thing to make the acquaint- 
ance forthwith. There might be several conveniences attend- 
ing this course : the weaver had possibly got a lantern, and 
Dunstan was tired of feeling his way. He was still nearly 
three-quarters of a mile from home, and the lane was becom- 
ing unpleasantly slippery, for the mist was passing into rain. 
He turned up the bank, not without some fear least he might 
miss the right way, since he was not certain whether the light 
were in front or on the side of the cottage. But he felt the 
ground before him cautiously with his whip-handle, and at last 
arrived safely at the door. He knocked loudly, rather enjoy- 
ing the idea that the old fellow would be frightened at the 
sudden noise. He heard no movement in reply : all was si- 
lence in the cottage. Was the weaver gone to bed, then? If 
so, why had he left a light? That was a strange forgetfulness 
in a miser. Dunstan knocked still more loudly, and, without 
pausing for a reply, pushed his fingers through the latch-hole, 
intending to shake the door and pull the latch-string up and 
down, not doubting that the door was fastened. But, to his 
surprise, at this double motion the door opened, and he found 
himself in front of a bright fire which lit up every corner of 
the cottage — the bed, the loom, the three chairs, and the table 
— and showed him that Marner was not there. 

Nothing at that moment could be much more inviting to 
Dunsey than the bright fire on the brick hearth : he walked in 
and seated himself by it at once. There was something in 
front of the fire, too, that would have been inviting to a hun- 
gry man, if it had been in a different stage of cooking. It 
was a small bit of pork suspended from the kettle-hanger by 
a string passed through a large door-key, in a way known to 
primitive housekeepers unpossessed of jacks. ^But the pork 
had been hung at the farthest extremity of the hanger, appar- 
ently to prevent the roasting from proceeding too rapidly dur- 
ing the owner’s absence. The old staring simpleton had hot 


SILAS MARNER. 


41 


meat for his supper, then? thought Dunstan. People had 
always said he lived on mouldy bread, on purpose to check his 
appetite. But where could he be at this time, and on such an 
evening, leaving his supper in this stage of preparation, and 
his door unfastened? Dunstan’s own recent difficulty in mak- 
ing his way suggested to him that the weaver had perhaps gone 
outside his cottage to fetch in fuel, or for some such brief pur- 
pose, and had slipped into the Stone-pit. That was an inter- 
esting idea to Dunstan, carrying consequences of entire nov- 
elty. If the weaver was dead, who had a right to his money? % 
Who would know where his money was hidden? Who would ' 
know that anybody had come to take it away ? He went no 
farther into the subtleties of evidence : the pressing question, 

“ Where is the money?” now took such entire possession of 
him as to make him quite forget that the weaver’s death was 
not a certainty. A dull mind, once arriving at an inference 
that flatters a desire, is rarely able to retain the impression 
that the notion from which the inference started was purely 
problematic. And Dunstan’s mind was as dull as the mind 
of a possible felon usually is. There were only three hiding- 
places where he had ever heard of cottagers’ hoards being 
found : the thatch, the bed, and a hole in the floor. Marner’s 
cottage had no thatch; and Dunstan’s first act, after a train 
of thought made rapid by the stimulus of cupidity, was to go 
up to the bed; but while he did so, his eyes travelled eagerly 
over the floor, where the bricks, distinct in the firelight, were 
discernible under the sprinkling of sand. But not everywhere ; 
for there was one spot, and one only, which was quite covered 
with sand, and sand showing the marks of fingers, which had 
apparently been careful to spread it over a given space. It 
was near the treadles of the loom. In an instant Dunstan ^ 
darted to that spot, swept away the sand with his whip, and, 
inserting the thin end of the hook between the bricks, found 
that they were loose. In haste he lifted up two bricks, and 
saw what he had no doubt was the object of his search; for 
what could there be but money in those two leathern bags? 
And, from their weight, they must be filled with guineas. 
Dunstan felt round the hole, to be certain that it held no more; 
then hastily replaced the bricks, and spread the sand over 


42 


SILAS MARNER. 


them. Hardly more than five minutes had passed since he 
entered the cottage, but it seemed to Dunstan like a long 
while ; and though he was without any distinct recognition of 
the possibility that Marner might be alive, and might re-enter 
the cottage at any moment, he felt an undefinable dread laying 
hold on him, as he rose to his feet with the bags in his hand. 
He would hasten out into the darkness, and then consider what 
he should do with the bags. He closed the door behind him 
immediately, that he might shut in the stream of light : a few 
steps would be enough to carry him beyond betrayal by the 
gleams from the shutter-chinks and the latch-hole. The rain 
and darkness had got thicker, and he was glad of it ; though 
it was awkward walking with both hands filled, so that it was 
as much as he could do to grasp his whip along with one of 
the bags. But when he had gone a yard or two, he might take 
his time. So he stepped forward into the darkness. 


CHAPTER Y. 

When Dunstan Cass turned his back on the cottage, Silas 
Marner was not more than a hundred yards away from it, 
plodding along from the village with a sack thrown round his 
shoulders as an overcoat, and with a horn lantern in his hand. 
His legs were weary, but his mind was at ease, free from the 
presentiment of change. The sense of security more frequently 
springs from habit than from conviction, and for this reason it 
often subsists after such a change in the conditions as might 
have been expected to suggest alarm. The lapse of time dur- 
ing which a given event has not happened is, in this logic of 
habit, constantly alleged as a reason why the event should 
never happen, even when the lapse of time is precisely the 
added condition which makes the event imminent. A man 
will tell you that he has worked in a mine for forty years, un- 
hurt by an accident, as a reason why he should apprehend no 
danger, though the roof is beginning to sink ; and it is often 
observable, that the older a man gets, the more difficult it is 
to him to retain a believing conception of his own death. This 


SILxVS MARKER. 


43 


influence of habit was necessarily strong in a man whose life 
was so monotonous as Marner’s — who saw no new people and 
heard of no new events to keep alive in him the idea of the 
unexpected and the changeful ; and it explains simply enough 
why his mind could be at ease, though he had left his house 
and his treasure more defenceless than usual. Silas was 
thinking with double complacency of his supper : first, because 
it would be hot and savory ; and secondly, because it would 
cost him nothing. For the little bit of pork was a present 
from that excellent housewife Miss Priscilla Lammeter, to 
whom he had this day carried home a handsome piece of linen ; 
and it was only on occasion of a present like this that Silas 
indulged himself with roast meat. Supper was his favorite 
meal, because it came at his time of revelry, when his heart 
warmed over his gold ; whenever he had roast meat, he always 
chose to have it for supper. But this evening he had no 
sooner ingeniously knotted his string fast round his bit of pork, 
twisted the string according to rule over his door-key, passed 
it through the handle, and made it fast on the hanger, than he 
remembered that a piece of very fine twine was indispensable 
to his “ setting-up ” a new piece of work in his loom early in 
the morning. It had slipped his memory, because, in coming 
from Mr. Lammeter’s, he had not had to pass through the vil- 
lage ; but to lose time by going on errands in the morning was 
out of the question. It was a nasty fog to turn out into, but 
there were things Silas loved better than his own comfort; so, 
drawing his pork to the extremity of the hanger, and arming 
himself with his lantern and his old sack, he set out on what, 
in ordinary weather, would have been a twenty minutes’ er- 
rand. He could not have locked his door without undoing his 
well-knotted string and retarding his supper; it was not worth 
his while to make that sacrifice. What thief would find his 
way to the Stone-pits on such a night as this? and why 
should he come on this particular night, when he had never 
come through all the fifteen years before? These questions 
were not distinctly present in Silas’s mind; they merely serve 
to represent the vaguely felt foundation of his freedom from 
anxiety. 

He reached his door in much satisfaction that his errand 


44 


SILAS MARNER. 


was done : he opened it, and to his short-sighted eyes every- 
thing remained as he had left it, except that the fire sent out 
a welcome increase of heat. He trod about the floor while 
putting by his lantern and throwing aside his hat and sack, 
so as to merge the marks of Dunstan’s feet on the sand in the 
marks of his own nailed boots. Then he moved his pork 
nearer to the fire, and sat down to the agreeable business of 
tending the meat and warming himself at the same time. 

Any one who had looked at him as the red light shone upon 
his pale face, strange straining eyes, and meagre form, would 
perhaps have understood the mixture of contemptuous pity, 
dread, and suspicion with which he was regarded by his 
neighbors in Raveloe. Yet few men could be more harmless 
than poor Marner. In his truthful simple soul not even the 
growing greed and worship of gold could beget any vice 
directly injurious to others. The light of his faith quite put 
out, and his affections made desolate, he had clung with all 
the force of his nature to his work and his money ; and like 
all objects to which a man devotes himself, they had fashioned 
him into correspondence with themselves. His loom, as he 
wrought in it without ceasing, had in its turn wrought on him, 
and confirmed more and more the monotonous craving for its 
monotonous response. His gold, as he hung over it and saw 
it grow, gathered his power of loving together into a hard iso- 
lation like its own. 

As soon as he was warm he began to think it would be a 
long while to wait till after supper before he drew out his 
guineas, and it would be pleasant to see them on the table be- 
fore him as he ate his unwonted feast. For joy is the best of 
wine, and Silas’s guineas were a golden wine of that sort. 

He rose and placed his candle unsuspectingly on the floor 
near his loom, swept away the sand without noticing any 
change, and removed the bricks. The sight of the empty hole 
made his heart leap violently, but the belief that his gold e was 
gone could not come at once — only terror, and the eager effort 
to put an end to the terror. He passed his trembling hand all 
about the hole, trying to think it possible that his eyes had 
deceived him; then he held the candle in the hole and exam- 
ined it curiously, trembling more and more. At last he shook 


SILAS MARKER. 


45 


so violently that he let fall the candle, and lifted his hands to 
his nead, trying to steady himself, that he might think. Had 
he put his gold somewhere else, by a sudden resolution last 
night, and then forgotten it? A mau falling into dark waters 
seeks a momentary footing even on sliding stones ; and Silas, 
by acting as if he believed in false hopes, warded off the mo- 
ment of despair. He searched in every corner, he turned his 
bed over, and shook it, and kneaded it ; he looked in his brick 
oven where he laid his sticks. When there was no other 
place to be searched, he kneeled down again and felt once more 
all round the hole. There was no untried refuge left for a 
moment’s shelter from the terrible truth. 

Yes, there was a sort of refuge which always comes with 
the prostration of thought under an overpowering passion : it 
was that expectation of impossibilities, that belief in contra- 
dictory images, which is still distinct from madness, because 
it is capable of being dissipated by the external fact. Silas 
got up from his knees trembling, and looked round at the 
table : didn’t the gold lie there after all? The table was bare. 
Then he turned and looked behind him — looked all round his 
dwelling, seeming to strain his brown eyes after some possible 
appearance of the bags where he had already sought them in 
vain. He could see every object in his cottage — and his gold 
was not there. • 

Again he put his trembling hands to his head, and gave a 
wild ringing scream, the cry of desolation. For a few mo- 
ments after, he stood motionless ; but the cry had relieved him 
from the first maddening pressure of the truth. He turned, 
and tottered toward his loom, and got into the seat where he 
worked, instinctively seeking this as the strongest assurance 
* of reality. 

And now that all the false hopes had vanished, and the first 
shock of certainty was past, the idea of a thief began to pre- 
sent itself, and he entertained it eagerly, because a thief might 
be caught and made to restore the gold. The thought brought 
some new strength with it, and he started from his loom to 
the door. As he opened it the rain beat in upon him, for it 
was falling more and more heavily. There were no footsteps 
to be tracked on such a night— footsteps? When had the thief 


46 


SILAS MARNER. 


come? During Silas’s absence in the daytime the door had 
been locked, and there had been no marks of any inroad on his 
return by daylight. And in the evening, too, he said to him- 
self, everything was the same as when he had left it. The 
sand and bricks looked as if they had not been moved. Was 
it a thief who had taken the bags? or was it a cruel power that 
no hands could reach which had delighted in making him a 
second time desolate? He shrank from this vaguer dread, and 
fixed his mind with struggling effort on the robber with hands, 
who could be reached by hands. His thoughts glanced at all 
the neighbors who had made any remarks, or asked any ques- 
tions, which he might now regard as a ground of suspicion. 
There was Jem Rodney, a known poacher, and otherwise dis- 
reputable : he had often met Marner in his journeys across the 
fields, and had said something jestingly about the weaver’s 
money ; nay, he had once irritated Marner, by lingering at the 
fire when he called to light his pipe, instead of going about his 
business. Jem Rodney was the man — there was ease in the 
thought. Jem could be found and made to restore the money : 
Marner did not want to punish him, but only to get back his 
gold which had gone from him, and left his soul like a forlorn 
traveller on an unknown desert. The robber must be laid hold 
of. Marner’ s ideas of legal authority were confused, but he 
felt that he must go and proclaim his loss ; and the great peo- 
ple in the village — the clergyman, the constable, and Squire 
Cass — would make Jem Rodney, or somebody else, deliver up 
the stolen money. He rushed out in the rain, under the stim- 
ulus of this hope, forgetting to cover his head, not caring to 
fasten his door ; for he felt as if he had nothing left to lose. 
He ran swiftly, till want of breath compelled him to slacken 
his pace as he was entering the village at the turning close to 
the Rainbow. 

The Rainbow, in Marner’ s view, was a place of luxurious 
resort for rich and stout husbands, whose wives had superflu- 
ous stores of linen ; it was the place where he was likely to 
find the powers and dignities of Raveloe, and where he could 
most speedily make his loss public. He lifted the latch, and 
turned into the bright bar or kitchen on the right hand, where 
the less lofty customers of the house were in the habit of as- 


SILAS MARNER. 


47 


sembling, the parlor on the left being reserved for the more 
select society in which Squire Cass frequently enjoyed the 
double pleasure of conviviality and condescension. But the 
parlor was dark to-night, the chief personages who ornamented 
its circle being all at Mrs. Osgood’s birthday dance, as God- 
frey Cass was. And in consequence of this, the party on the 
high-screened seats in the kitchen was more numerous than 
usual; several personages, who would otherwise have been ad- 
mitted into the parlor and enlarged the opportunity of hector- 
ing and condescension for their betters, being content this 
evening to vary their enjoyment by taking their spirits-and- 
water where they could themselves hector and condescend in 
company that called for beer. 


CHAPTER VI. 

The conversation, which was at a high pitch of animation 
when Silas approached the door of the Rainbow, had, as usual, 
been slow and intermittent when the company first assembled. 
The pipes began to be puffed in a silence which had an air of 
severity; the more important customers, who drank spirits 
and sat nearest the fire, staring at each other as if a bet were 
depending on the first man who winked ; while the beer-drink- 
ers, chiefly men in fustian jackets and smock-frocks, kept 
their eyelids down and rubbed their hands across their mouths, 
as if their draughts of beer were a funereal duty attended with 
embarrassing sadness. At last, Mr. Snell, the landlord, a 
man of a neutral disposition, accustomed to stand aloof from 
human differences as those of beings who were all alike in 
need of liquor, broke silence, by saying in a doubtful tone to 
his cousin the butcher, — 

“ Some folks ’ud say that was a fine beast you druv in yes- 
terday, Bob?” 

The butcher, a jolly, smiling, red-haired man, was not dis- 
posed to answer rashly. He gave a few puffs before he spat, 
and replied, “ And they wouldn’t be fur wrong, John.” 

After this feeble delusive thaw, the silence set in as severely 
as before. 


48 


SILAS MARKER. 


“Was it a red Durham?” said the farrier, taking up the 
thread of discourse after the lapse of a few minutes. 

The farrier looked at the landlord, and the landlord looked 
at the butcher, as the person who must take the responsibility 
of answering. 

“Red it was,” said the butcher, in his good-humored husky 
treble — “and a Durham it was.” 

“ Then you needn’t tell me who you bought it of,” said f he 
farrier, looking round with some triumph ; “ I know who it is 
has got the red Durhams o’ this country-side. And she’d a 
white star on her brow, I’ll bet a penny? ” The farrier leaned 
forward with his hands on his knees as he put this question, 
and his eyes twinkled knowingly. 

“ Well; yes — she might,” said the butcher, slowly, consid- 
ering that he was giving a decided affirmative. “ I don’t say 
contrairy.” 

“ I knew that very well,” said the farrier, throwing himself 
backward again, and speaking defiantly; “if I don’t know 
Mr. Lammeter’s cows, I should like to know who does — that’s 
all. And as for the cow you’ve bought, bargain or no bargain, 
I’ve been at the drenching of her — contradick me who will.” 

The farrier looked fierce, and the mild butcher’s conversa- 
tional spirit was roused a little. 

“I’m not for contradicking no man,” he said; “I’m for 
peace and quietness. Some are for cutting long ribs — I’m for 
cutting ’em short myself; but I don’t quarrel with ’em. All 
I say is, it’s a lovely carkiss — and anybody as was reasonable, 
it ’ud bring tears into their eyes to look at it.” 

“Well, it’s the cow as I drenched, whatever it is,” pursued 
the farrier, angrily; “and it was Mr. Lammeter’s cow, else 
you told a lie when you said it was a red Durham.” 

“ I tell no lies, ” said the butcher, with the same mild huski- 
ness as before, “ and I contradick none — not if a man was to 
swear himself black: he’s no meat o’ mine, nor none o’ my 
bargains. All I say is, it’s a lovely carkiss. And what I say 
I’ll stick to; but I’ll quarrel wi’ no man.” 

“No,” said the farrier, with bitter sarcasm, looking at the 
company generally ; “ and p’rhaps you ar’n’t pig-headed; and 
p’rhaps you didn’t say the cow was a red Durham; and p’ rhaps 


SILAS MARKER. 


49 


you didn’t say she’d got a star on her brow — stick to that, 
now you’re at it.” 

“ Come, come, ” said the landlord ; “ let the cow alone. The 
truth lies atween you: you’re both right and both wrong, as 
I allays say. And as for the cow’s being Mr. Lammeter’s, I 
say nothing to that; but this I say, as the Rainbow’s the 
Rainbow. And for the matter o’ that, if the talk is to be o’ 
the Lammeters, you know the most upo’ that head, eh, Mr. 
Macey? You remember when first Mr. Lammeter’s father 
come into these parts, and took the Warrens?” 

Mr. Macey, tailor and parish clerk, the latter of which 
functions rheumatism had of late obliged him to share with a 
small-featured young man who sat opposite him, held his white 
head on one side, and twirled his thumbs with an air of com- 
placency, slightly seasoned with criticism. He smiled pity- 
ingly, in answer to the landlord’s appeal, and said, — 

“ Ay, ay ; I know, I know ; but I let other folks talk. I’ve 
laid by now, and gev up to the young uns. Ask them as have 
been to school at Tarley : they’ve learnt pernouncing; that’s 
come up since my day.” 

“If you’re pointing at me, Mr. Macey,” said the deputy 
clerk, with an air of anxious propriety, “ I’m nowise a man to 
speak out of my place. As the psalm says, — 

‘ I know what’s right, nor only so, 

But also practise what I know.’ ” 

“Well, then, I wish you’d keep hold o’ the tune, when it’s 
set for you; if you’re for practising, I >wish you’d practise 
that,” said a large jocose-looking man, an excellent wheel- 
wright in his week-day capacity, but on Sundays leader of the 
choir. He winked, as he spoke, at two of the company, who 
were known officially as the “ bassoon” and the “key-bugle,” 
in the confidence that he was expressing the sense of the mu- 
sical profession in Raveloe. 

Mr. Tookey, the deputy clerk, who shared the unpopularity 
common to deputies, turned very red, but replied, with care- 
ful moderation — “Mr. VYinthrop, if you’ll bring me any proof 
as I’m in the wrong, J’m not the man to say I won’t alter. 
But there’s people set up their own ears for a standard, and 
4 


50 


SILAS MARKER 


expect the whole choir to follow ’em. There may be two 
opinions, I hope.” 

“Ay, ay,” said Mr. Macey, who felt very well satisfied with 
this attack on youthful presumption; “you’re right there, 
Tookey : there’s allays two ’pinions ; there’s the ’pinion a man 
has of himsen, and there’s the ’pinion other folks have on 
him. There’d be two ’pinions about a cracked bell, if the 
bell could hear itself.” 

“ Well, Mr. Macey,” said poor Tookey, serious amidst the 
general laughter, “ I undertook to partially fill up the office of 
parish clerk by Mr. Crackenthorp’s desire, whenever your in- 
firmities should make you unfitting; and it’s one of the rights 
thereof to sing in the choir — else why have you done the same 
yourself? ” 

“ Ah ! but the old gentleman and you are two folks, ” said 
Ben Winthrop. “ The old gentleman’s got a gift. Why, the 
Squire used to invite him to take a glass, only to hear him 
sing the ‘ Red Rovier’ ; didn’t he, Mr. Macey? It's a nat’ral 
gift. There’s my little lad Aaron, he’s got a gift — he can 
sing a tune off straight, like a throstle. But as for you, Mas- 
ter Tookey, you’d better stick to your ‘ Amens’ : your voice 
is well enough when you keep it up in your nose. It’s your 
inside as isn’t right made for music: it’s no better nor a hol- 
low stalk.” 

This kind of unflinching frankness was the most piquant 
form of joke to the company at the Rainbow, and Ben Win- 
throp’s insult was felt by everybody to have capped Mr. Ma- 
cey’ s epigram. 

“ I see what it is plain enough, ” said Mr. Tookey, unable 
to keep cool any longer. “ There’s a consperacy to turn me 
out o’ the choir, as I shouldn’t share the Christmas money — 
that’s where it is. But I shall speak to Mr. Crackenthorp ; 
I’ll not be put upon by no man.” 

“Nay, nay, Tookey,” said Ben Winthrop. “We’ll pay 
you your share to keep out of it — that’s what we’ll do. 
There’s things folks ’ud pay to be rid on, besides varmin.” 

“ Come, come, ” said the landlord, who felt that paying peo- 
ple for their absence was a principle dangerous to society ; “ a 
joke’s a joke. We’re all good friends here, I hope. We 


SILAS MARNER. 


51 


must give and take. You’re both right and you’re both 
wrong, as I say. I agree wi’ Mr. Macey here, as there’s two 
opinions; and if mine was asked, I should say they’re both 
right. Tookey’s right and Winthrop’s right, and they’ve 
only got to split the difference and make themselves even.” 

The farrier was puffing his pipe rather fiercely, in some con- 
tempt at this trivial discussion. He had no ear for music 
himself, and never went to church, as being of the medical 
profession, and likely to be in requisition for delicate cows. 
But the butcher, having music in his soul, had listened with a 
divided desire for Tookey’s defeat and for the preservation of 
the peace. 

“To be sure,” he said, following up the landlord’s concilia- 
tory view, “we’re fond of our old clerk; it’s nat’ral, and him 
used to be such a singer, and got a brother as is known for the 
first fiddler in this country-side. Eh, it’s a pity but what 
Solomon lived in our village, and could give us a tune when 
we liked; eh, Mr. Macey? I’d keep him in liver and lights, 
for nothing — that I would.” 

“ Ay, ay, ” said Mr. Macey, in the height of complacency ; 
“our family’s been known for musicianers as far back as any- 
body can tell. But them things are dying out, as I tell Solo- 
mon every time he comes round; there’s no voices like what 
there used to be, and there’s nobody remembers what we re- 
member, if it isn’t the old crows.” 

“ Ay, you remember when first Mr. Lammeter’s father come 
into these parts, don’t you, Mr. Macey?” said the landlord. 

“ I should think I did, ” said the old man, who had now 
gone through that complimentary process necessary to bring 
him up to the point of narration ; “ and a fine old gentleman 
he was — as fine, and finer nor the Mr. Lammeter as now is. 
He came from a bit north’ ard, so far as I could ever make out. 
But there’s nooody rightly knows about those parts: only it 
couldn’t be far north’ ard, nor much different from this coun- 
try, for he brought a fine breed o’ sheep with him, so there 
must be pastures there, and -everything reasonable. We 
heared tell as he’d sold his own land to come and take the 
Warrens, and that seemed odd for a man as had land of his 
own, to come and rent a farm in a strange place. But they 


52 


SILAS MARKER. 


said it was along of his wife’s dying; though there’s reasons 
in things as nobody knows on — that’s pretty much what I’ve 
made out; yet some folks are so wise, they’ll find you fifty 
reasons straight off, and all the while the real reason’s wink- 
ing at ’em in the corner, and they niver see’t. Howsomever, 
it was soon seen as we’d got a new parish’ ner as know’d the 
rights and customs o’ things, and kep a good house, and was 
well looked on by everybody. And the young man — that’s 
the Mr. Lammeter as now is, for he’d niver a sister — soon 
begun to court Miss Osgood, that’s the sister o’ the Mr. Osgood 
as now is, and a fine handsome lass she was — eh, you can’t 
think — they pretend this young lass is like her, but that’s the 
way wi’ people as don’t know what come before ’em. I should 
know, for I helped the old rector, Mr. Drumlow as was, I 
helped him marry ’em.” 

Here Mr. Macey paused ; he always gave his narrative in 
instalments, expecting to be questioned according to precedent. 

“Ay, and a partic’lar thing happened, didn’t it, Mr. Macey, 
so as you were likely to remember that marriage? ” said the 
landlord, in a congratulatory tone. 

“ I should think there did — a very partic’lai thing,” said Mr. 
Macey, nodding sideways. “For Mr. Drumlow — poor old 
gentleman, I was fond on him, though he’d got a bit confused 
in his head, what wi’ age and wi’ taking a drop o’ summat 
warm when the service come of a cold morning. And young 
Mr. Lammeter he’d have no way but he must be married in 
Janiwary, which, to be sure, ’s a unreasonable time to be 
married in, for it isn’t like a christening or a burying, as you 
can’t help; and so Mr. Drumlow — poor old gentleman, I was 
fond on him — but when he come to put the questions, he put 
’em by the rule o’ contrairy, like, and he says, * Wilt thou 
have this man to thy wedded wife? ’ says he, and then he 
says, 1 Wilt thou have this woman to thy wedded husband? ’ 
says he. But the partic’larest thing of all is, as nobody took 
any notice on it but me, and they answered straight off ‘ yes, ’ 
like as if it had been me saying ‘ Amen ’ i’ the right place, 
without listening to what went before.” 

“ But you knew what was going on well enough, didn’t you, 
Mr. Macey? You were live enough, eh?” said the butcher. 


SILAS MARNER. 


53 


“Lor bless you! ” said Mr. Macey, pausing, and smiling in 
pity at the impotence of his hearer’s imagination — “ why, I 
was all of a tremble: it was as if I’d been a coat pulled by the 
two tails, like; for I couldn’t stop the parson, I couldn’t take 
upon me to do that ; and yet I said to myself, I says, ‘ Sup- 
pose they shouldn’t be fast married, ’cause the words are con- 
trairy?’ and my head went working like a mill, for I was 
allays uncommon for turning things over and seeing all round 
’em ; and I says to myself, ‘ Is’t the meanin’ or the words as 
makes folks fast i’ wedlock? ’ For the parson meant right, 
and the bride and bridegroom meant right. But then, when 
I come to think on it, meanin’ goes but a little way i’ most 
things, for you may mean to stick things together and your 
glue may be bad, and then where are you? And so I says to 
mysen, 1 It isn’t the meanin’, it’s the glue.’ And I was wor- 
reted as if I’d got three bells to pull at once, when we went 
into the vestry, and they begun to sign their names. But 
where’s the use o’ talking? — you can’t think what goes on in 
a ’cute man’s inside.” 

“But you held in for all that, didn’t you, Mr. Macey?” 
said the landlord. 

“ Ay, I held in tight till I was by mysen wi’ Mr. Drumlow, 
and then I out wi’ everything, but respectful, as I allays did. 
And he made light on it, and he says, ‘ Pooh, pooh, Macey, 
make yourself easy,’ he says; ‘ it’s neither the meaning nor 
the words — it’s the regestei does it — that’s the glue.’ So you 
see he settled it easy : for parsons and doctors know every- 
thing by heart, like, so as they aren’t worreted wi’ thinking 
what’s the rights and wrongs o’ things, as I’n been many and 
many’s the time. And sure enough the wedding turned out 
all right, on’y poor Mrs. Lammeter — that’s Miss Osgood as 
was — died afore the lasses was growed up ; but for prosperity 
and everything respectable there’s no family more looked on.” 

Every one of Mr. Macey’ s audience had heard this story 
many times, but it was listened to as if it had been a favorite 
tune, and at certain points the puffing of the pipes was momen- 
tarily suspended, that the listeners might give their whole 
minds to the expected words. But there was more to come; 
and Mr. Snell, the landlord, duly put the leading question. 


54 


SILAS MARKER. 


“ Why, old Mr. Lammeter had a pretty fortin, didn’t they 
say, when he come into these parts?” 

“Well, yes,” said Mr. Macey ; “but I dare say it’s as much 
as this Mr. Lammeter’ s done to keep it whole. For there was 
allays a talk as nobody could get rich on the Warrens : though 
he holds it cheap, for it’s what they call Charity Land.” 

“Ay, and there’s few folks know so well as you how it 
come to be Charity Land, eh, Mr. Macey?” said the butcher. 

“How should they?” said the old clerk, with some con- 
tempt. “Why, my grandfather made the grooms’ livery for 
that Mr. Cliff as came and built the big stables at the War- 
rens. Why, they’re stables four times as big as Squire Cass’s, 
for he thought o’ nothing but hosses and hunting, Cliff didn’t 
— a Lunnon tailor, some folks said, as had gone mad wi ; cheat- 
ing. For he couldn’t ride; lor bless you! they said he’d got 
no more grip o’ the hoss than if his legs had been cross-sticks : 
my grandfather heared old Squire Cass say so many and many 
a time. But ride he would as if Old Harry had been a-driv- 
ing him; and he’d a son, a lad o’ sixteen; and nothing would 
his father have him do, but he must ride and ride — though the 
lad was frightened, they said. And it was a common saying 
as the father wanted to ride the tailor out o’ the lad, and make 
a gentleman on him — not but what I’m a tailor myself, but in 
respect as God made me such, I’m proud on it, for ‘ Macey, 
tailor,’ ’s been wrote up over our door since afore the Queen’s 
heads went out on the shillings. But Cliff, he was ashamed 
o’ being called a tailor, and he was sore vexed as his riding 
was laughed at, and nobody o’ the gentlefolks hereabout could 
abide him. Howsomever, the poor lad got sickly and died, 
and the father didn’t live long after him, for he got queerer 
nor ever, and they said he used to go out i’ the dead o’ the 
night, wi’ a lantern in his hand, to the stables, and set a lot 
o’ lights burning, for he got as he couldn’t sleep; and there 
he’d stand, cracking his whip and looking at his hosses; and 
they said it was a mercy as the stables didn’t get burnt down 
wi’ the poor dumb creaturs in ’em. But at last he died rav- 
ing, and they found as he’d left all his property, Warrens and 
all, to a Lunnon Charity, and that’s how the Warrens come to 
be Charity Land ; though, as for the stables, Mr. Lammeter 


SILAS MARNER. 


55 


never uses ’em — they’re out o’ all charicter — lor bless you! if 
you was to set the doors a-banging in ’em, it ’ud sound like 
thunder half o’er the parish.” 

“ Ay, but there’s more going on in the stables than what 
folks see by daylight, eh, Mr. Macey?” said the landlord. 

“ Ay, ay ; go that way of a dark night, that’s all,” said Mr. 
Macey, winking mysteriously, “ and then make believe, if you 
like, as you didn’t see lights i’Ahe stables, nor hear the stamp- 
ing o’ the hosses, nor the cracking o’ the whips, and howling, 
too, if it’s tow’rt daybreak. 1 Cliff’s Holiday’ has been the 
name of it ever sin’ I were a boy; that’s to say, some said as 
it was the holiday Old Harry gev him from roasting, like. 
That’s what my father told me, and he was a reasonable man, 
though there’s folks nowadays know what happened afore they 
were born better nor they know their own business.” 

“What do you say to that, eh, Dowlas?” said the landlord, 
turning to the farrier, who was swelling with impatience for 
his cue. “ There’s a nut for you to crack.” 

Mr. Dowlas was the negative spirit in the company, and was 
proud of his position. 

“ Say? I say what a man should say as doesn’t shut his 
eyes to look at a finger-post. I say, as I’m ready to wager 
any man ten pound, if he’ll stand out wi’ me any dry night in 
the pasture before the Warren stables, as we shall neither see 
lights nor hear noises, if it isn’t the blowing of our own noses. 
That’s what I say, and I’ve said it many a time; but there’s 
nobody ’ull ventur a ten-pun’ note on their ghos’es as they 
make so sure of.” 

“ Why, Dowlas, that’s easy betting, that is,” said Ben Win- 
throp. “ You might as well bet a man as he wouldn’t catch 
the rheumatise if he stood up to’s neck in the pool of a frosty 
night. It ’ud be fine fun for a man to win his bet as he’d 
catch the rheumatise. Folks as believe in Cliff’s Holiday 
aren’t a-going to ventur near it for a matter o’ ten pound.” 

“ If Master Dowlas wants to know the truth on it,” said Mr. 
Macey, with a sarcastic smile, tapping his thumbs together, 
“he’s no call to lay any bet — let him go and stan’ by himself 
— there’s nobody ’ull hinder him; and then he can let the 
parish’ners know if they’re wrong.” 


56 


SILAS MARNER. 


“ Thank you! I’m obliged to you,” said the farrier, with a 
snort of scorn. “ If folks are fools, it’s no business o’ mine. 
I don’t want to make out the truth about ghos’es: I know it 
a’ ready. But I’m not against a bet — everything fair and 
open. Let any man bet me ten pound as I shall see Cliff’s 
Holiday, and I’ll go and stand by myself. I want no com- 
pany. I’d as lief do it as I’d fill this pipe.” 

“Ah, but who’s to watch you, Dowlas, and see you do it? 
That’s no fair bet,” said the butcher. 

“No fair bet?” replied Mr. Dowlas, angrily. “I should 
like to hear any man stand up and say I want to bet unfair. 
Come, now, Master Lundy, I should like to hear you say it. ” 

“Very like you would,” said the butcher. “But it’s no 
business o’ mine. You’re none o’ my bargains, and I aren’t 
a-going to try and ’bate your price. If anybody’ll bid for you 
at your own vallying, let him. I’m for peace and quietness, 
I am.” 

“Yes, that’s what every yapping cur is, when you hold a 
stick up at him, ” said the farrier. “ But I’ m afraid o’ neither 
man nor ghost, and I’m ready to lay a fair bet. I aren’t a 
turn -tail cur.” 

“Ay, but there’s this in it, Dowlas,” said the landlord, 
speaking in a tone of much candor and tolerance. “There’s 
folks, i’ my opinion, they can’t see ghos’es, not if they stood 
as plain as a pike-staff before ’em. And there’s reason i’ 
that. For there’s my wife, now, can’t smell, not if she’d the 
strongest o’ cheese under her nose. I never see’d a ghost my- 
self; but then I says to myself, ‘ Very like I haven’t got the 
smell for ’em.’ I mean, putting a ghost for a smell, or else 
con trairi ways. And so, I’m for holding with both sides; for, 
as I say, the truth lies between ’em. And if Dowlas was to 
go and stand, and say he’d never seen a wink o’ Cliff’s Holi- 
day all the night through, I’d back him; and if anybody said 
as Cliff’s Holida}’ was certain sure for all that, I’d back him 
too. For the smell’s what I go by.” 

The landlord’s analogical argument was not well received 
by the farrier — a man intensely opposed to compromise. 

“ Tut, tut, ” he said, setting down his glass with refreshed 
irritation; “what’s the smell got to do with it? Did ever a 


SILAS MARNER. 


57 


ghost give a man a black eye? That’s what I should like to 
know. If ghos’es want me to believe in ’em, let ’em leave off 
skulking i’ the dark and i’ lone places — let ’em come where 
there’s company and candles.” 

“As if ghos’es ’ud want to be believed in by anybody so 
ignirant!” said Mr. Macey, in deep disgust at the farrier’s 
crass incompetence to apprehend the conditions of ghostly 
phenomena. 


CHAPTER VII. 

Yet the next moment there seemed to be some evidence that 
ghosts had a more condescending disposition than Mr. Macey 
attributed to them ; for the pale thin figure of Silas Marner 
was suddenly seen standing in the warm light, uttering no 
word, but looking round at the company with his strange un- 
earthly eyes. The long pipes gave a simultaneous movement, 
like the antennae of startled insects, and every man present, 
not excepting even the sceptical farrier, had an impression 
that he saw, not Silas Marner in the flesh, but an apparition ; 
for the door by which Silas had entered was hidden by the 
high-screened seats, and no one had noticed his approach. 
Mr. Macey, sitting a long way off the ghost, might be supposed 
to have felt an argumentative triumph, which would tend to 
neutralize his share of the general alarm. Had he not always 
said that when Silas Marner was in that strange trance of his, 
his soul went loose from his body? Here was the demonstra- 
tion : nevertheless, on the whole, he would have been as well 
contented without it. For a few moments there was a dead 
silence, Marner’ s want of breath and agitation not allowing 
him to speak. The landlord, under the habitual sense that he 
was bound to keep his house open to all company, and confi- 
dent in the protection of his unbroken neutrality, at last took 
on himself the task of adjuring the ghost. 

“Master Marner,” he said, in a conciliatory tone, “what’s 
lacking to you? What’s your business here? ” 

“ Robbed! ” said Silas, gaspingly. “I’ve been robbed! I 
want the constable — and the Justice — and Squire Cass — and 
Mr. Cracken thorp. ” 


58 


SILAS MARNER. 


“Lay hold on him, Jem Rodney,” said the landlord, the 
idea of a ghost subsiding; “he’s off his head, I doubt. He’s 
wet through.” 

Jem Rodney was the outermost man, and sat conveniently 
near Marner’s standing-place; but he declined to give his ser- 
vices. 

“Come and lay hold on him yourself, Mr. Snell, if you’ve 
a mind, ” said J em, rather sullenly. “ He’ s been robbed, and 
murdered too, for what I know,” he added, in a muttering 
tone. 

“ Jem Rodney ! ” said Silas, turning and fixing his strange 
eyes on the suspected man. 

“Ay, Master Marner, what do ye want wi’ me?” said Jem, 
trembling a little, and seizing his drinking-can as a defensive 
weapon. 

“ If it was you stole my money, ” said Silas, clasping his 
hands entreatingly, and raising his voice to a cry, “ give it me 
back, — and I won’t meddle with you. I won’t set the consta- 
ble on you. Give it me back, and I’ll let you — I’ll let you 
have a guinea.” 

“Me stole your money!” said Jem, angrily. “I’ll pitch 
this can at your eye if you talk o’ my stealing your money.” 

“Come, come, Master Marner,” said the landlord, now ris- 
ing resolutely, and seizing Marner by the shoulder, “ if you’ve 
got any information to lay, speak it out sensible, and show as 
you’re in your right mind, if you expect anybody to listen to 
you. You’re as wet as a drownded rat. Sit down and dry 
yourself, and speak straight forrard.” 

“ Ah, to be sure, man, ” said the farrier, who began to feel 
that he had not been quite on a par with himself and the occa- 
sion. “Let’s have no more staring and screaming, else we’ll 
have you strapped for a madman. That was why I didn’t 
speak at the first — thinks I, the man’s run mad.” 

“ Ay, ay, make him sit down, ” said several voices at once, 
well pleased that the reality of ghosts remained still an open 
question. 

The landlord forced Marner to take off his coat, and then to 
sit down on a chair aloof from every one else, in the centre of 
the circle and the direct rays of the fire. The weaver, too 


SILAS MARKER. 


59 


feeble to have any distinct purpose beyond that of getting help 
to recover his money, submitted unresistingly. The transient 
fears of the company were now forgotten in their strong curi- 
osity, and all faces were turned toward Silas, when the land- 
lord, having seated himself again, said, — 

“ Now, then, Master Marner, what’s this you’ve got to say — 
as you’ve been robbed? Speak out.” 

“ He’d better not say again as it was me robbed him,” cried 
Jem Rodney, hastily. “What could I ha’ done with his 
money? I could as easy steal the parson’s surplice, and wear 
it.” 

“Hold your tongue, Jem, and let’s hear what he’s got to 
say,” said the landlord. “Now, then, Master Marner.” 

Silas now told his story, under frequent questioning as the 
mysterious character of the robbery became evident. 

This strangely novel situation of opening his trouble to his 
Raveloe neighbors, of sitting in the warmth of a hearth not his 
own, and feeling the presence of faces and voices which were 
his nearest promise of help, had doubtless its influence on 
Marner, in spite of his passionate preoccupation with his loss. 
Our consciousness rarely registers the beginning of a growth 
within us any more than without us: there have been many 
circulations of the sap before we detect the smallest sign of 
the bud. 

The slight suspicion with which his hearers at first listened 
to him gradually melted away before the convincing simplicity 
of his distress : it was impossible for the neighbors to doubt 
that Marner was telling the truth, not because they were capa- 
ble of arguing at once from the nature of his statements to the 
absence of any motive for making them falsely, but because, 
as Mr. Macey observed, “Folks as had the devil to back ’em 
were not likely to be sc mushed ” as poor Silas was. Rather, 
from the strange fact that the robber had left no traces, and 
had happened to know the nick of time, utterly incalculable by 
mortal agents, when Silas would go away from home without 
locking his door, the more probable conclusion seemed to be 
that his disreputable intimacy in that quarter, if it ever exist- 
ed, had been broken up, and that, in consequence, this ill turn 
had been done to Marner by somebody it was quite in vain to 


60 


SILAS MARKER. 


set the constable after. Why this preternatural felon should 
be obliged to wait till the door was left unlocked, was a ques- 
tion which did not present itself. 

“It isn’t Jem Rodney as has done this work, Master Mar- 
ner,” said the landlord. “You mustn’t be a-casting your eye 
at poor Jem. There may be a bit of reckoning against Jem 
for the matter of a hare or so, if anybody was bound to keep 
their eyes staring open, and niver to wink; but Jem’s been a- 
sitting here drinking his can, like the decentest man i’ the 
parish, since before you left your house, Master Marner, by 
your own account.” 

“Ay, ay,” said Mr. Macey; “let’s have no accusing o’ the 
innicent. That isn’t the law. There must be folks to swear 
again’ a man before he can be ta’en up. Let’s have no accus- 
ing o’ the innicent, Master Marner.” 

Memory was not so utterly torpid in Silas that it could not 
be wakened by these words. With a movement of compunc- 
tion as new and strange to him as everything else within the 
last hour, he started from his chair and went close up to Jem, 
looking at him as if he wanted to assure himself of the ex- 
pression in his face. 

“I was wrong,” he said — “yes, yes — I ought to have 
thought. There’s nothing to witness against you, Jem. Only 
you’d been into my house oftener than anybody else, and so 
you came into my head. I don’t accuse you — I won’t accuse 
anybody — only,” he added, lifting up his hands to his head, 
and turning away with bewildered misery, “ I try — I try to 
think where my guineas can be.” 

“Ay, ay, they’re gone where it’s hot enough to melt ’em, I 
doubt,” said Mr. Macey. 

“Tchuh!” said the farrier. And then he asked, with a 
cross-examining air, “ How much money might there be in the 
bags, Master Marner?” 

“ Two hundred and seventy -two pounds twelve and six- 
pence, last night when I counted it, ” said Silas, seating him- 
self again, with a groan. 

“Pooh! w'hy, they’d be none so heavy to carry. Some 
tramp’s been in, that ’s all; and as for the no footmarks, and 
the bricks and the sand being all right — why, your eyes are 


SILAS MARNER. 


61 


pretty much like a insect’s, Master Marner; they’ re obliged to 
look so close, you can’t see much at a time. It’s my opinion 
as, if I’d been you, or you’d been me — for it comes to the 
same thing — you wouldn’t have thought you’d found every- 
thing as you left it. But what I vote is, as two of the sensi- 
blest o’ the company should go with you to Master Kench, the 
constable’s — he’s ill i’ bed, I know that much — and get him 
to appoint one of us his deppity; for that’s the law, and I 
don’t think anybody ’ull take upon him to contradick me 
there. It isn’t much of a walk to Kench’s; and then, if it’s 
me as is deppity, I’ll go back with you, Master Marner, and 
examine your premises; and if anybody’s got any fault to find 
with that, I’ll thank him to stand up and say it out like a 
man.” 

By this pregnant speech the farrier had re-established his 
self-complacency, and waited with confidence to hear himself 
named as one of the superlatively sensible men. 

“Let us see how the night is, though,” said the landlord, 
who also considered himself personally concerned in this prop- 
osition. “Why, it rains heavy still,” he said, returning from 
the door. 

“Well, I’m not the man to be afraid o’ the rain,” said the 
farrier. “For it’ll look bad when Justice Malam hears as 
respectable men like us had a information laid before ’em and 
took no steps.” 

The landlord agreed with this view, and after taking the 
sense of the company, and duly rehearsing a small ceremony 
known in high ecclesiastical life as the nolo episcopari, he con- 
sented to take on himself the chill dignity of going to Kench’s. 
But to the farrier’s strong disgust, Mr. Macey now started an 
objection to his proposing himself as a deputy constable; for 
that oracular old gentleman, claiming to know the law, stated, 
as a fact delivered to him by his father, that no doctor could 
be a constable. 

“And you’re a doctor, I reckon, though you’re only a cow- 
doctor — for a fly’s a fly, though it may be a hoss-fly,” con- 
cluded Mr. Macey, wondering a little at his own *' ’cuteness.” 

There was a hot debate upon this, the farrier being of 
course indisposed to renounce the quality of doctor, but con- 


62 


SILAS MARNER. 


tending that a doctor could be a constable if he liked — the 
law meant, he needn’t be one if he didn’t like. Mr. Macey 
thought this was nonsense, since the law was not likely to be 
fonder of doctors than of other folks. Moreover, if it was in 
the nature of doctors more than of other men not to like being 
constables, how came Mr. Dowlas to be so eager to act in that 
capacity? 

“ I don’t want to act the constable,” said the farrier, driven 
into a corner by this merciless reasoning ; “ and there’s no man 
can say it of me, if he’d tell the truth. But if there’s to be 
any jealousy and envying about going to Kench’s in the rain, 
let them go as like it — you won’t get me to go, I can tell 
you.” 

By the landlord’s intervention, however, the dispute was 
accommodated. Mr. Dowlas consented to go as a second per- 
son disinclined to act officially ; and so poor Silas, furnished 
with some old coverings, turned out with his two companions 
into the rain again, thinking of the long night-hours before 
him, not as those do who long to rest, but as those who expect 
to “ watch for the morning.” 


CHAPTER, VIII. 

When Godfrey Cass returned from Mrs. Osgood’s party at 
midnight, he was not much surprised to learn that Dunsey had 
not come home. Perhaps he had not sold Wildfire, and was 
waiting for another chance — perhaps, on that foggy afternoon, 
he had preferred housing himself at the Red Lion at Batherley 
for the night, if the run had kept him in that neighborhood ; 
for he was not likely to feel much concern about leaving his 
brother in suspense. Godfrey’s mind was too full of Nancy 
Lammeter’s looks and behavior, too full of the exasperation 
against himself and his lot which the sight of her always pro- 
duced in him, for him to give much thought to Wildfire or to 
the probabilities of Dunstan’s conduct. 

The next morning the whole village was excited by the 
story of the robbery, and Godfrey, like every one else, was 


SILAS MARNER. 


63 


occupied in gathering and discussing news about it, and in 
visiting th6 Stone-pits. The rain had washed away all possi- 
bility of distinguishing footmarks, but a close investigation of 
the spot had disclosed, in the direction opposite to the village, 
a tinder-box, with a flint and steel, half sunk in the mud. It 
was not Silas’s tinder-box, for the only one he had ever had 
was still standing on his shelf ; and the inference generally 
accepted was, that the tinder-box in the ditch was somehow 
connected with the robbery. A small minority shook their 
heads, and intimated their opinion that it was not a robbery 
to have much light thrown on it by tinder-boxes, that Master 
Marner’s tale had a queer look with it, and that such things 
had been known as a man’s doing himself a mischief, and then 
setting the justice to look for the doer. But when questioned 
closely as to their grounds for this opinion, and what Master 
Marner had to gain by such false pretences, they only shook 
their heads as before, and observed that there was no knowing 
what some folks counted gain ; moreover, that everybody had 
a right to their own opinions, grounds or no grounds, and that 
the weaver, as everybody knew, was partly crazy. Mr. Macey, 
though he joined in the defence of Marner against all suspi- 
cions of deceit, also pooh-poohed the tinder-box; indeed, re- 
pudiated it as a rather impious suggestion, tending to imply 
that everything must be done by human hands, and that there 
was no power which could make away with the guineas with- 
out moving the bricks. Nevertheless, he turned round rather 
sharply on Mr. Tookey, when the zealous deputy, feeling that 
this was a view of the case peculiarly suited to a parish clerk, 
carried it still further, and doubted whether it was right to 
inquire into a robbery at all when the circumstances were so 
mysterious. 

“As if,” concluded Mr. Tookey — “as if there was nothing 
but what could be made out by justice and constables.” 

“Now, don’t you be for overshooting the mark, Tookey,” 
said Mr. Macey, nodding his head aside admonishingly. 
“ That’s what you’re allays at; if I throw a stone and hit, you 
think there’s summat better than hitting, and you try to throw 
a stone beyond. What I said was against the tinder-box : I 
said nothing against justices and constables, for they’re o’ 


64 


SILAS MARKER 


King George’s making, and it ’ud be ill-becoming a man in a 
parish office to fly out again’ King George.” 

While these discussions were going on amongst the group 
outside the Rainbow, a higher consultation was being carried 
on within, under the presidency of Mr. Crackenthorp, the 
rector, assisted by Squire Cass and other substantial parish- 
ioners. It had just occurred to Mr. Snell, the landlord— he 
being, as he observed, a man accustomed to put two and two 
together — to connect with the tinder-box, which, as deputy 
constable, he himself had had the honorable distinction of 
finding, certain recollections of a pedler who had called to 
drink at the house about a month before, and had actually 
stated that he carried a tinder-box about with him to light his 
pipe. Here, surely, was a clew to be followed out. And as 
memory, when duly impregnated with ascertained facts, is 
sometimes surprisingly fertile, Mr. Snell gradually recovered a 
vivid impression of the effect produced on him by the pedler’ s 
countenance and conversation. He had a “ look with his eye ” 
which fell unpleasantly on Mr. Snell’s sensitive organism. 
To be sure, he didn’t say apything particular — no, except that 
about the tinder-box — but it isn’t what a man says, it’s the 
way he says it. Moreover, he had a swarthy foreignness of 
complexion which boded little honesty. 

“ Did he wear ear-rings? ” Mr. Crackenthorp wished to 
know, having some acquaintance with foreign customs. 

“Well — stay — let me see,” said Mr. Snell, like a docile 
clairvoyant, who would really not make a mistake if she could 
help it. After stretching the corners of his mouth and con- 
tracting his eyes, as if he were trying to see the ear-rings, he 
appeared to give up the effort, and said, “ Well, he’d got ear- 
rings in his box to sell, so it’s nat’ral to suppose he might 
wear ’em. But he called at every house, a’ most, in the vil- 
lage; there’s somebody else, mayhap, saw ’em in his ears, 
though I can’t take upon me rightly to say.” 

Mr. Snell was correct in his surmise, that somebody else 
would remember the pedler’ s ear-rings. For on the spread of 
inquiry among the villagers it was stated with gathering em- 
phasis that the parson had wanted to know whether the ped- 
ler wore ear-rings in his ears, and an impression was created 


SILAS MARKER. 


65 


that a great deal depended on the eliciting of this fact. Of 
course, every one who heard the question, not having any dis- 
tinct image of the pedler as without ear-rings, immediately 
had an image of him with ear-rings, larger or smaller, as the 
case might be ; and the image was presently taken for a vivid 
recollection, so that the glazier’s wife, a well-intentioned 
woman, not given to lying, and whose house was among the 
cleanest in the village, was ready to declare, as sure as ever 
she meant to take the sacrament the very next Christmas that 
was ever coming, that she had seen big ear-rings, in the shape 
of the young moon, in the pedler’ s two ears; while Jinny 
Oates, the cobbler’s daughter, being a more imaginative per- 
son, stated not only that she had seen them too, but that they 
had made her blood creep, as it did at that very moment while 
there she stood. 

Also, by way of throwing further light on this clew of the 
tinder-box, a collection was made of all the articles purchased 
from the pedler at various houses, and carried to the Rainbow 
to be exhibited there. In fact, there was a general feeling in 
the village that for the clearing up of this robbery there must 
be a great deal done at the Rainbow, and that no man need 
offer his wife an excuse for going there while it was the scene 
of severe public duties. 

Some disappointment was felt, and perhaps a little indig- 
nation also, when it became known that Silas Marner, on be- 
ing questioned by the Squire and the parson, had retained no 
other recollection of the pedler than that he had called at his 
door, but had not entered his house, having turned away at 
once when Silas, holding the door ajar, had said that he 
wanted nothing. This had been Silas’s testimony, though he 
clutched strongly at the idea of the pedler’s being the culprit, 
if only because it gave him a definite image of a whereabout 
for his gold after it had been taken away from its hiding-place : 
he could see it now in the pedler’s box. But it was observed 
with some irritation in the village that anybody but a “ blind 
creatur ” like Marner would have seen the man prowling about, 
for how came he to leave his tinder-box in the ditch close by 
if he hadn’t been lingering there? Doubtless, he had made 
his observations when he saw Marner at the door. Anybody 
5 


66 


SILAS MARNER. 


might know — and only look at him — that the weaver was a 
half-crazy miser. It was a wonder the pedler hadn’t mur- 
dered him; men of that sort, with rings in their ears, had 
been known for murderers often and often; there had been 
one tried at the ’sizes, not so long ago but what there were 
people living who remembered it. 

Godfrey Cass, indeed, entering the Eainbow during one of 
Mr. Snell’s frequently repeated recitals of his testimony, had 
treated it lightly, stating that he himself had bought a pen- 
knife of the pedler, and thought him a merry grinning fellow 
enough; it was all nonsense, he said, about the man’s evil 
looks. But this was spoken of in the village as the random 
talk of youth, “ as if it was only Mr. Snell who had seen some- 
thing odd about the pedler ! ” On the contrary, there were at 
least half a dozen who were ready to go before Justice Malam, 
and give in much more striking testimony than any the land- 
lord could furnish. It was to be hoped Mr. Godfrey would 
not go to Tarley and throw cold water on what Mr. Snell said 
there, and so prevent the justice from drawing up a warrant. 
He was suspected of intending this, when, after mid-day, he 
was seen setting off on horseback in the direction of Tarley. 

But by this time Godfrey’s interest in the robbery had faded 
before his growing anxiety about Dunstan and Wildfire, and 
he was going, not to Tarley, but to Batherley, unable to rest 
in uncertainty about them any longer. The possibility that 
Dunstan had played him the ugly trick of riding away with 
Wildfire, to return at the end of a month, when he had gam- 
bled away or otherwise squandered the price of the horse, was 
a fear that urged itself upon him more, even, than the thought 
of an accidental injury; and now that the dance at Mrs. Os- 
good’s was past, he was irritated with himself that he had 
trusted his horse to Dunstan. Instead of trying to still his 
fears he encouraged them, with that superstitious impression 
which clings to us all, that if we expect evil very strongly it 
is the less likely to come; and when he heard a horse ap- 
proaching at a trot, and saw a hat rising above a hedge beyond 
an angle of the lane, he felt as if his conjuration had succeed- 
ed. But no sooner did the horse come within sight than his 
heart sank again. It was not Wildfire; and in a few moments 


SILAS MARNER. 


67 


more he discerned £hat the rider was not Dunstan, but Bryce, 
who pulled up to speak, with a face that implied something 
disagreeable. 

“Well, Mr. Godfrey, that’s a lucky brother of yours, that 
Master Dunsey, isn’t he?” 

“What do you mean?” said Godfrey, hastily. 

“ Why, hasn’t he been home yet? ” said Bryce. 

“Home? no. What has happened? Be quick. What has 
he done with my horse? ” 

“ Ah, I thought it was yours, though he pretended you had 
parted with it to him.” 

“Has he thrown him down and broken his knees?” said 
Godfrey, flushed with exasperation. 

“ Worse than that,” said Bryce. “ You see, I’d made a bar- 
gain With him to buy the horse for a hundred and twenty — a 
swinging price, but I always liked the horse. And what does 
he do but go and stake him — fly at a hedge with stakes in it, 
a-top of a bank with a ditch before it. The horse had been 
dead a pretty good while when he was found. So he hasn’t 
been home since, has he?” 

“Home? no,” said Godfrey, “and he’d better keep away. 
Confound me for a fool ! I might have known this would be 
the end of it.” 

“Well, to tell you the truth,” said Bryce, “after I’d bar- 
gained for the horse, it did come into my head that he might 
be riding and selling the horse without your knowledge, for I 
didn’t believe it was his own. I knew Master Dunsey was up 
to his tricks sometimes. But where can he be gone? He’s 
never been seen at Batherley. He couldn’t have been hurt, 
for he must have walked off.” 

“Hurt? ’’said Godfrey, bitterly. “He’ll never be hurt — 
he’s made to hurt other people.” 

“And so you did give him leave to sell the horse, eh?” 
said Bryce. 

“ Yes ; I wanted to part with the horse — he was always a 
little too hard in the mouth for me, ” said Godfrey ; his pride 
making him wince under the idea that Bryce guessed the sale 
to be a matter of necessity. “ I was going to see after him — 
I thought some mischief had happened. I’ll go back now,” 


68 


SILAS MARKER. 


he added, turning the horse’s head, and wishing he could get 
rid of Bryce ; for he felt that the long-dreaded crisis in his life 
was close upon him. “ You’re coming on to Raveloe, aren’t 
you? ” 

“ Well, no, not now,” said Bryce. “I was coming round 
there, for I had to go to Flitton, and I thought I might as 
well take you in my way, and just let you know all I knew 
myself about the horse. I suppose Master Dunsey didn’t like 
to show himself till the ill news had blown over a bit. He’s 
perhaps gone to pay a visit at the Three Crowns, by Whit- 
bridge — I know he’s fond of the house.” 

“Perhaps he is,” said Godfrey, rather absently. Then, 
rousing himself, he said, with an effort at carelessness, “We 
shall hear of him soon enough, I’ll be bound.” 

“Well, here’s my turning,” said Bryce, not surprised to 
perceive that Godfrey was rather “down”; “so I’ll bid you 
good-day, and wish I may bring you better news another 
time.” 

Godfrey rode along slowly, representing to himself the scene 
of confession to his father, from which he felt that there was 
now no longer any escape. The revelation about the money 
must be made the very next morning; and if he withheld the 
rest, Dunstan would be sure to come back shortly, and, find- 
ing that he must bear the brunt of his father’s anger, would 
tell the whole story out of spite, even though he had nothing 
to gain by it. There was one step, perhaps, by which he 
might still win Dunstan’s silence and put off the evil day : he 
might tell his father that he had himself spent the money paid 
to him by Fowler ; and as he had never been guilty of such an 
offence before, the affair would blow over after a little storm- 
ing. But Godfrey could not bend himself to this. He felt 
that in letting Dunstan have the money he had already been 
guilty of a breach of trust hardly less culpable than that of 
spending the money directly for his own behoof; and yet 
there was a distinction between the two acts which made him 
feel that the one was so much more blackening than the other 
as to be intolerable to him. 

“I don’t pretend to be a good fellow,” he said to himself; 
“but I’m not a scoundrel — at least, I’ll stop short somewhere. 


SILAS MARNER. 


69 


I’ll bear the consequences of what I have done sooner than 
make believe I’ve done what I never would have done. I’d 
never haye spent the money for my own pleasure — I was tor- 
tured into it.” 

Through the remainder of this day Godfrey, with only oc- 
casional fluctuations, kept his will bent in the direction of a 
complete avowal to his father, and he withheld the story of 
Wildfire’s loss till the next morning, that it might serve him 
as an introduction to heavier matter. The old Squire was ac- 
customed to his son’s frequent absence from home, and thought 
neither Dunstan’s nor Wildfire’s non-appearance a matter call- 
ing for remark. Godfrey said to himself again and again that 
if he let slip this one opportunity of confession he might 
never have another; the revelation might be made even in a 
more odious way than by Dunstan’s malignity: she might 
come as she had threatened to do. And then he tried to make 
the scene easier to himself by rehearsal: he made up his mind 
how he would pass from the admission of his weakness in let- 
ting Dunstan have the money to the fact that Dunstan had a 
hold on him which he had been unable to shake off, and how 
he would work up his father to expect something very bad 
before he told him the fact. The old Squire was an implaca- 
ble man : he made resolutions in violent anger, and he was not 
to be moved from them after his anger had subsided — as 
fiery volcanic matters cool and harden into rock. Like many 
violent and implacable men, he allowed evils to grow under 
favor of his own heedlessness, till they pressed upon him with 
exasperating force, and then he turned round with fierce sever- 
ity and became unrelentingly hard. This was his system with 
his tenants : he allowed them to get into arrears, neglect their 
fences, reduce their stock, sell their straw, and otherwise go 
the wrong way, — and then, when he became short of money in 
consequence of this indulgence, he took the hardest measures 
and would listen to no appeal. Godfrey knew all this, and 
felt it with the greater force because he had constantly suffered 
annoyance from witnessing his father’s sudden fits of unrelent- 
ingness, for which his own habitual irresolution deprived him 
of all sympathy. (He was not critical on the faulty indul- 
gence which preceded these fits ; that seemed to him natural 


70 


SILAS MARNER. 


enough.) Still there was just the chance, Godfrey thought, 
that his father’s pride might see this marriage in a light that 
would induce him to hush it up, rather than turn his son out 
and make the family the talk of the country for ten miles 
round. 

This was the view of the case that Godfrey managed to 
keep before him pretty closely till midnight, and he went to 
sleep thinking that he had done with inward debating. But 
when he awoke in the still morning darkness he found it im- 
possible to reawaken his evening thoughts ; it was as if they 
had been tired out and were not to be roused to further work. 
Instead of arguments for confession, he could now feel the 
presence of nothing but its evil consequences : the old dread of 
disgrace came back — the old shrinking from the thought of 
raising a hopeless barrier between himself and Nancy — the old 
disposition to rely on chances which might be favorable to 
him, and save him from betrayal. Why, after all, should he 
cut off the hope of them by his own act? He had seen the 
matter in a wrong light yesterday. He had been in a rage 
with Dunstan, and had thought of nothing but a thorough 
break-up of their mutual understanding; but what it would 
be really wisest for him to do was to try and soften his fa- 
ther’s anger against Dunsey, and keep things as nearly as pos- 
sible in their old condition. If Dunsey did not come back for 
a few days (and Godfrey did not know but that the rascal had 
enough money in his pocket to enable him to keep away still 
longer), everything might blow over. 


CHAPTER IX. 

Godfrey rose and took his own breakfast earlier than usual, 
but lingered in the wainscoted parlor till his younger brothers 
had finished their meal and gone out; awaiting his father, 
who always took a walk with his managing-man before break- 
fast. Every one breakfasted at a different hour in the Red 
House, and the Squire was always the latest, giving a long 
chance to a rather feeble morning appetite before he tried it. 


SILAS MARKER. 


71 


The table had been spread with substantial eatables nearly two 
hours before he presented himself — a tall, stout man of sixty, 
with a face in which the knit brow and rather hard glance 
seemed contradicted by the slack and feeble mouth. His per- 
son showed marks of habitual neglect, his dress was slovenly ; 
and yet there was something in the presence of the old Squire 
distinguishable from that of the ordinary farmers in the parish, 
who were perhaps every whit as refined as he, but, having 
slouched their way through life with a consciousness of being 
in the vicinity of their “ betters,” wanted that self-possession 
and authoritativeness of voice and carriage which belonged to 
a man who thought of superiors as remote existences with 
whom he had personally little more to do than with America 
or the stars. The Squire had been used to parish homage all 
his life, used to the presupposition that his family, his tank- 
ards, and everything that was his were the oldest and best; 
and as he never associated with any gentry higher than him- 
self, his opinion was not disturbed by comparison. 

He glanced at his son as he entered the room, and said, 
“What, sir! haven’t you had your breakfast yet?” but there 
was no pleasant morning greeting between them ; not because 
of any unfriendliness, but because the sweet flower of courtesy 
is not a growth of such homes as the Red House. 

“Yes, sir,” said Godfrey, “I’ve had my breakfast, but I 
was waiting to speak to you.” 

“ Ah! well,” said the Squire, throwing himself indifferently 
into his chair, and speaking in a ponderous coughing fashion, 
which was felt in Raveloe to be a sort of privilege of his rank, 
while he cut a piece of beef, and held it up before the deer- 
hound that had come in with him. “ Ring the bell for my ale 
will you? You youngsters’ business is your own pleasure 
mostly. There’s no hurry about it for anybody but your- 
selves.” 

The Squire’s life was quite as idle as his sons’, but it was 
a fiction kept up by himself and his contemporaries in Rave- 
loe that youth was exclusively the period of folly, and that 
their aged wisdom was constantly in a state of endurance 
mitigated by sarcasm. Godfrey waited, before he spoke 
again, until the ale had been brought and the door closed— 


72 


SILAS MARNER. 


an interval during which Fleet, the deer-hound, had con- 
sumed enough bits of beef to make a poor man’s holiday 
dinner. 

“There’s been a cursed piece of ill-luck with Wildfire,” he 
began; “happened the day before yesterday.” 

“ What! broke his knees?” said the Squire, after taking a 
draught of ale. “ I thought you knew how to ride better than 
that, sir. I never threw a horse down in my life. If I had, 
1 might ha’ whistled for another, for my father wasn’t quite 
so ready to unstring as some other fathers I know of. But 
they must turn over anew leaf — they must. What with mort- 
gages and arrears, I’m as short o’ cash as a roadside pauper. 
And that fool Kimble says the newspaper’s talking about 
peace. Why, the country wouldn’t have a leg to stand on. 
Prices ’ud run down like a jack, and I should never get my 
arrears, not if I sold all the fellows up. And there’s that 
damned Fowler. I won’t put up with him any longer; I’ve 
told Winthrop to go to Cox this very day. The lying scoun- 
drel told me he’d be sure to pay me a hundred last month. 
He takes advantage because he’s on that outlying farm, and 
thinks I shall forget him.” 

The Squire had delivered this speech in a coughing and in- 
terrupted manner, but with no pause long enough for Godfrey 
to make it a pretext for taking up the word again. He felt 
that his father meant to ward off any request for money on the 
ground of the misfortune with Wildfire, and that the empha- 
sis he had thus been led to lay on his shortness of cash and 
his arrears was likely to produce an attitude of mind the ut- 
most unfavorable for his own disclosure. But he must go on, 
now he had begun. 

“It’s worse than breaking the horse’s knees— he’s been 
staked and killed,” he said, as soon as his father was silent, 
and had begun to cut his meat. “ But I wasn’t thinking of 
asking you to buy me another horse; I was only thinking I’d 
lost the means of paying you with the price of Wildfire, as I’d 
meant to do. Dunsey took him to the hunt to sell him for me 
the other day, and after he’d made a bargain for a hundred 
and twenty with Bryce, he went after the hounds, and took 
some fool’s leap or other that did for the horse at once. If it 


SILAS MARNER. 


73 


hadn’t been for that, I should have paid you a hundred pounds 
this morning.” 

The Squire had laid down his knife and fork, and was star- 
ing at his son in amazement, not being sufficiently quick of 
brain to form a probable guess as to what could have caused 
so strange an inversion of the paternal and filial relations as 
this proposition of his son to pay him a hundred pounds. 

“The truth is, sir — I’m very sorry — I was quite to blame,” 
said Godfrey. “Fowler did pay that hundred pounds. He 
paid it to me, when I was over there one day last month. 
And Dunsey bothered me for the money, and I let him have 
it, because I hoped I should be able to pay it you before this. ” 

The Squire was purple with anger before his son had done 
speaking, and found utterance difficult. “You let Dunsey 
have it, sir? And how long have you been so thick with Dun- 
sey that you must collogue with him to embezzle my money? 
Are you turning out a scamp? I tell you I won’t have it. 
I’ll turn the whole pack of you out of the house together, and 
marry again. I’d have you to remember, sir, my property’s 
got no entail on it; — since my grandfather’s time the Casses 
can do as they like with their land. Remember that, sir. 
Let Dunsey have the money! Why should you let Dunsey 
have the money? There’s some lie at the bottom of it.” 

“There’s no lie, sir,” said Godfrey. “I wouldn’t have 
spent the money myself, but Dunsey bothered me, and I was 
a fool, and let him have it. But I meant to pay it, whether 
he did or not. That’s the whole story. I never meant to 
embezzle money, and I’m not the man to do it. You never 
knew me do a dishonest trick, sir.” 

“ Where’s Dunsey, then? What do you stand talking there 
for? Go and fetch Dunsey, as I tell you, and let him give 
account of what he wanted the money for, and what he’s done 
with it. He shall repent it. I’ll turn him out. I said I 
would, and I’ll do it. He sha’n’t brave me. Go and fetch 
him.” 

“Dunsey isn’t come back, sir.” 

“What! did he break his own neck, then?” said the 
Squire, with some disgust at the idea that, in that case, he 
could not fulfil his threat. 


74 


SILAS MARNER. 


“No, he wasn’t hurt, I believe, for the horse was found 
dead, and Dunsey must have walked off. I dare say we shall 
see him again by and by. I don’t know where he is.” 

“And what must you be letting him have my money for? 
Answer me that,” said the Squire, attacking Godfrey again, 
since Dunsey was not within reach. 

“Well, sir, I don’t know,” said Godfrey, hesitatingly. 
That was a feeble evasion, but Godfrey was not fond of lying, 
and, not being sufficiently aware that no sort of duplicity can 
long flourish without the help of vocal falsehoods, he was quite 
unprepared with invented motives. 

“ You don’t know? I tell you what it is, sir. You’ve been 
up to some trick, and you’ve been bribing him not to tell,” 
sajd the Squire, with a sudden acuteness which startled God- 
frey, who felt his heart beat violently at the nearness of his 
father’s guess. The sudden alarm pushed him on to take the 
next step — a very slight impulse suffices for that on a down- 
ward road. 

“ Why, sir, ” he said, trying to speak with careless ease, “ it 
was a little affair between me and Dunsey ; it’s no matter to 
anybody else. It’s hardly worth while to pry into young 
men’s fooleries: it wouldn’t have made any difference to you, 
sir, if I’d not had the bad luck to lose Wildfire. I should 
have paid you the money.” 

“Fooleries! Pshaw! it’s time you’d done with fooleries. 
And I’d have you know, sir, you must ha’ done with ’em,” 
said the Squire, frowning and casting an angry glance at his 
son. “ Your goings on are not what I shall find money for any 
longer. There’s my grandfather had his stables full o’ 
horses, and kept a good house, too, and in worse times, by 
what I can make out; and so might I, if I hadn’t four good- 
for-nothing fellows to hang on me like horse-leeches. I’ve 
been too good a father to you all — that’s what it is. But I 
shall pull up, sir.” 

Godfrey was silent. He was not likely to be very penetrat- 
ing in his judgments, but he had always had a sense that his 
father’s indulgence had not been kindness, and had had a 
vague longing for some discipline that would have checked 
his own errant weakness and helped his better will. The 


SILAS MARKER. 


75 


Squire ate his bread and meat hastily, took a deep draught of 
ale, then turned his chair from the table, and began to speak 
again. 

“ It’ll be all the worse for you, you know — you’d need try 
and help me keep things together.” 

“Well, sir, I’ve often offered to take the management of 
things, but you know you’ve taken it ill always, and seemed 
to think I wanted to push you out of your place. ” 

“I know nothing o’ your offering or o’ my taking it ill,” 
said the Squire, whose memory consisted in certain strong im- 
pressions unmodified by detail ; “ but I know, one while you 
seemed to be thinking o’ marrying, and I didn’t offer to put 
any obstacles in your way, as some fathers would. I’d as 
lieve you married Lammeter’s daughter as anybody. I sup- 
pose, if I’d said you nay, you’d ha’ kept on with it; but, for 
want o’ contradiction, you’ve changed your mind. You’re a 
shilly-shally fellow : you take after your poor mother. She 
never had a will of her own ; a woman has no call for one, if 
she’s got a proper man for her husband. But your wife had 
need have one, for you hardly know your own mind enough to 
make both your legs walk one way. The lass hasn’t said 
downright she won’t have you, has she? ” 

“No,” said Godfrey, feeling very hot and uncomfortable; 
“but I don’t think she will.” 

“ Think! why haven’t you the courage to ask her? Do you 
stick to it, you want to have her — that’s the thing? ” 

“There’s no other woman I want to marry,” said Godfrey, 
evasively. 

“Well, then, let me make the offer for you, that’s all, if 
you haven’t the pluck to do it yourself. Lammeter isn’t 
likely to be loath for his daughter to marry into my family, I 
should think. And as for the pretty lass, she wouldn’t have 
her cousin — and there’s nobody else, as I see, could ha’ stood 
in your way.” 

“I’d rather let it be, please, sir, at present,” said Godfrey, 
in alarm. “ I think she’s a little offended with me just now, 
and I should like to speak for myself. A man must manage 
these things for himself.” 

“ Well, speak, then, and manage it, and see if you can’t 


76 


SILAS MARKER. 


turn over a new leaf. That’s what a man must do when he 
thinks o’ marrying.” 

“ I don’t see how I can think of it at present, sir. You 
wouldn’t like to settle me on one of the farms, I suppose, and 
I don’t think she’d come to live in this house with all my 
brothers. It’s a different sort of life to what she’s been used 
to.” 

“ Not come to live in this house? Don’t tell me. You ask 
her, that’s all,” said the Squire, with a short, scornful laugh. 

“ I’d rather let the thing be, at present, sir,” said Godfrey. 
“I hope you won’t try to hurry it on by saying anything.” 

“I shall do what I choose,” said the Squire, “and I shall 
let you know I’m master; else you may turn out, and find an 
estate to drop into somewhere else. Go out and tell Winthrop 
not to go to Cox’s, but wait for me. And tell ’m to get my 
horse saddled. And stop : look out and get that hack o’ Dun- 
sey’s sold, and hand me the money, will you? He’ll keep no 
more hacks at my expense. And if you know where he’s 
sneaking — I dare say you do — you may tell him to spare him- 
self the journey o’ coming back home. Let him turn ostler, 
and keep himself. He sha’n’t hang on me any more.” 

“I don’t know where he is; and if I did, it isn’t my place 
to tell him to keep away, ” said Godfrey, moving toward the 
door. i 

“Confound it, sir, don’t stay arguing, but go and order my 
horse,” said the Squire, taking up a pipe. 

Godfrey left the room, hardly knowing whether he were 
more relieved by the sense that the interview was ended with- 
out having made any change in his position, or more uneasy 
that he had entangled himself still further in prevarication 
and deceit. What had passed about his proposing to Nancy 
had raised a new alarm, lest by some after-dinner words of 
his father’s to Mr. Lammeter he should be thrown into the 
embarrassment of being obliged absolutely to decline her when 
she seemed to be within his reach. He fled to his usual ref- 
uge, that of hoping for some unforeseen turn of fortune, sohie 
favorable chance which would save him from unpleasant con- 
sequences — perhaps even justify his insincerity by manifesting 
its prudence. 


SILAS MARNER. 


77 


In this point of trusting to some throw of fortune’s dice, 
Godfrey can hardly be called old-fashioned. Favorable 
Chance is the god of all men who follow their own devices 
instead of obeying a law they believe in. Let even a polished 
man of these days get into a position he is ashamed to avow, 
and his mind will be bent on all the possible issues that may 
deliver him from the calculable results of that position. Let 
him live outside his income, or shirk the resolute honest work 
that brings wages, and he will presently find himself dreaming 
of a possible benefactor, a possible simpleton who may be ca- 
joled into using his interest, a possible state of mind in some 
possible person not yet forthcoming. Let him neglect the re- 
sponsibilities of his office, and he will inevitably anchor him- 
self on the chance that the thing left undone may turn out 
not to be of the supposed importance. Let him betray his 
friend’s confidence, and he will adore that same cunning com- 
plexity called Chance, which gives him the hope that his 
friend will never know. Let him forsake a decent craft that 
he may pursue the gentilities of a profession to which nature 
never called him, and his religion will infallibly be the wor- 
ship of blessed Chance, which he will believe in as the mighty 
creator of success. The evil principle deprecated in that relig- 
ion is the orderly sequence by which the seed brings forth 
a crop after its kind. 


CHAPTER X. 

Justice Malam was naturally regarded in Tarley and Rav- 
eloe as a man of capacious mind, seeing that he could draw 
much wider conclusions without evidence than could be ex- 
pected of his neighbors who were not on the Commission of 
the Peace. Such a man was not likely to neglect the clew of 
the tinder-box, and an inquiry was set on foot concerning a 
pedler, name unknown, with curly black hair and a foreign 
complexion, carrying a box of cutlery and jewelry, and wear- 
ing large rings in his ears. But either because inquiry was 
too slow-footed to overtake him, or because the description 


78 


SILAS MARKER. 


applied to so many pedlers that inquiry did not know how to 
choose among them, weeks passed away, and there was no 
other result concerning the robbery than a gradual cessation 
of the excitement it had caused in Raveloe. Dunstan Cass’s 
absence was hardly a subject of remark: he had once before 
had a quarrel with his father, and had gone off, nobody knew 
whither, to return at the end of six weeks; take up his old 
quarters unforbidden and swagger as usual. His own family, 
who equally expected this issue, with the sole difference that 
the Squire was determined this time to forbid him the old 
quarters, never mentioned his absence; and when his uncle 
Kimble or Mr. Osgood noticed it, the story of his having 
killed Wildfire and committed some offence against his father 
was enough to prevent surprise. To connect the fact of Dun- 
sey’s disappearance with that of the robbery occurring on the 
same day lay quite away from the track of every one’s thought 
— even Godfrey’s, who had better reason than any one else to 
know what his brother was capable of. He remembered no 
mention of the weaver between them since the time, twelve 
years ago, when it was their boyish sport to deride him; and, 
besides, his imagination constantly created an alibi for Dun- 
stan: he saw him continually in some congenial haunt, to 
which he had walked off on leaving Wildfire — saw him spong- 
ing on chance acquaintances, and meditating a return home to 
the old amusement of tormenting his elder brother. Even if 
any brain in Raveloe had put the said two facts together, I 
doubt whether a combination so injurious to the prescriptive 
respectability of a family with a mural monument and venera- 
ble tankards would not have been suppressed as of unsound 
tendency. But Christmas puddings, brawn, and abundance 
of spirituous liquors, throwing the mental originality into the 
channel of nightmare, are great preservatives against a dan- 
gerous spontaneity of waking thought. 

When the robbery was talked of at the Rainbow and else- 
where, in good company, the balance continued to waver be- 
tween the rational explanation founded on the tinder-box, and 
the theory of an impenetrable mystery that mocked investiga- 
tion. The advocates of the tinder-box-and-pedler view con- 
sidered the other side a muddle-headed and credulous set, 


SILAS MARNER. 


79 


who, because they themselves were wall-eyed, supposed every- 
body else to have the same blank outlook; and the adherents 
of the inexplicable more than hinted that their antagonists 
were animals inclined to crow before they had found any corn 
— mere skimming-dishes in point of depth — whose clear-sight- 
edness consisted in supposing there was nothing behind a 
barn-door because they couldn’t see through it; so that, 
though their controversy did not serve to elicit the fact con- 
cerning the robbery, it elicited some true opinions of collateral 
importance. 

But while poor Silas’s loss served thus to brush the slow 
current of Raveloe conversation, Silas himself was feeling the 
withering desolation of that bereavement about which his 
neighbors were arguing at their ease. To any one who had 
observed him before he lost his gold, it might have seemed 
that so withered and shrunken a life as his could hardly be 
susceptible of a bruise, could hardly endure any subtraction 
but such as would put an end to it altogether. But in reality 
it had been an eager life, filled with immediate purpose which 
fenced him in from the wide, cheerless unknown. It had been 
a clinging life; and though the object round which its fibres 
had clung was a dead disrupted thing, it satisfied the need for 
clinging. But now the fence was broken down — the support 
was snatched away. Marner’s thoughts could no longer move 
in their old round, and were baffled fly a blank like that which 
meets a plodding ant when the earth has broken away on its 
homeward path. The loom ^ras there, and the weaving, and 
the growing pattern in the cloth; but the bright treasure in 
the hole under his feet was gone; the prospect of handling 
and counting it was gone : the evening had no phantasm of 
delight to still the poor soul’s craving. The thought of the 
money he would get by his actual work could bring no joy, for 
its meagre image was only a fresh reminder of his loss ; and 
hope was too heavily crushed by the sudden blow for his 
imagination to dwell on the growth of a new hoard from that 
small beginning. 

He filled up the blank with grief. As he sat weaving, he 
every now and then moaned low, like one in pain : it was the 
sign that his thoughts had come round again to the sudden 


80 


SILAS MARNER. 


chasm — to the empty evening-time. And all the evening, as 
he sat in his loneliness by his dull fire, he leaned his elbows 
on his knees, and clasped his head with his hands, and moaned 
very low — not as one who seeks to be heard. 

And yet he was not utterly forsaken in his trouble. The 
repulsion Marner had always created in his neighbors was 
partly dissipated by the new light in which this misfortune 
had shown him. Instead of a man who had more cunning 
than honest folks could come by, and, what was worse, had 
not the inclination to use that cunning in a neighborly way, 
it was now apparent that Silas had not cunning enough 
to keep his own. He was generally spoken of as a “poor 
mushed creatur”; and that avoidance of his neighbors, 
which had before been referred to his ill-will and to a prob- 
able addiction to worse company, was now considered mere 
craziness. 

This change to a kindlier feeling was shown in various ways. 
The odor of Christmas cooking being on the wind, it was the 
season when superfluous pork and black puddings are sugges- 
tive of charity in well-to-do families; and Silas’s misfortune 
had brought him uppermost in the memory of housekeepers 
like Mrs. Osgood. Mr. Crackenthorp, too, while he admon- 
ished Silas that his money had probably been taken from him 
because he thought too much of it and never came to church, 
enforced the doctrine by ^present of pigs’ pettitoes, well cal- 
culated to dissipate unfounded prejudices against the clerical 
character. Neighbors who had nothing but verbal consolation 
to give showed a disposition not only to greet Silas and dis- 
cuss his misfortune at some length when they encountered 
him in the village, but also to take the trouble of calling at 
his cottage and getting him to repeat all the details on the 
very spot; and then they would try to cheer him by saying, 
“Well, Master Marner, you’re no worse oft’ nor other poor 
folks, after all ; and if you was to be crippled, the parish ’ud 
give you a ’lowance.” 

I suppose one reason why we are seldom able to comfort our 
neighbors with our words is that our good-will gets adulterated, 
in spite of ourselves, before it can pass our lips. We can send 
black ouddings and pettitoes without giving them a flavor of 


SILAS MARNER. 


81 


our own egoism ; but language is a stream that is almost sure 
to smack of a mingled soil. There was a fair proportion of 
kindness in Raveloe; but it was often of a beery and bungling 
sort, and took the shape least allied to the complimentary and 
hypocritical. 

Mr. Macey, for example, coming one evening expressly to 
let Silas know that recent events had given him the advantage 
of standing more favorably in the opinion of a man whose 
judgment was not formed lightly, opened the conversation by 
saying, as soon as he had seated himself and adjusted his 
thumbs, — 

“ Come, Master Marner, why, you’ve no call to sit a-moan- 
ing. You’re a deal better off to ha’ lost your money, nor to 
ha’ kep it by foul means. I used to think, when you first 
come into these parts, as you were no better nor you should 
be ; you were younger a deal than what you are now ; but you 
were allays a staring, white-faced creatur, partly like a bald- 
faced calf, as I may say. But there’s no knowing: it isn’t 
every queer-looksed thing as Old Harry’s had the making of 
— I mean, speaking o’ toads and such; for they’ re often harm- 
less, and useful against varmin. And it’s pretty much the 
same wi’ you, as fur as I can see. Though as to the yarbs 
and stuff to cure the breathing, if you brought that sort o’ 
knowledge from distant parts, you might ha’ been a bit freer 
of it. And if the knowledge wasn’t well come by, why, you 
might ha’ made up for it by coming to church reg’lar; for as 
for the children as the Wise Woman charmed, I’ve been at the 
christening of ’em again and again, and they took the watei* 
just as well. And that’s reasonable: for if Old Harry’s a 
mind to do a bit o’ kindness for a holiday, like, who’s got 
anything against it? That’s my thinking; and I’ve been 
clerk o’ this parish forty year, and I know, when the parson 
and me does the cussing of a Ash Wednesday, there’s no cuss- 
ing o’ folks as have a mind to be cured without a doctor, let 
Kimble say what he will. And so, Master Marner, as I was 
saying — for there’s windings i’ things as they may carry you 
to the fur end o’ the prayer-book afore you get back to ’em — 
my advice is, as you keep up your sperrits ; for as for think- 
ing you’re a deep un, and ha’ got more inside you nor ’ll bear 
6 


82 


SILAS MARNER. 


daylight, I’m not o’ that opinion at all, and so I tell the neigh- 
bors. For, says I, you talk o’ Master Marner making out a 
tale — why, it’s nonsense, that is : it ’ud take a ’cute man to 
make a tale like that; and, says I, he looked as scared as a 
rabbit.” 

During this discursive address Silas had continued motion- 
less in his previous attitude, leaning his elbows on his knees, 
and pressing his hands against his head. Mr. Macey, not 
doubting that he had been listened to, paused, in the expecta- 
tion of some appreciatory reply, but Marner remained silent. 
He had a sense that the old man meant to be good-natured 
and neighborly ; but the kindness fell on him as sunshine falls 
on the wretched — he had no heart to taste it, and felt that it 
was very far off him. 

“Come, Master Marner, have you got nothing to say to 
that? ” said Mr. Macey at last, with a slight accent of impa- 
tience. 

“ Oh, ” said Marner, slowly, shaking his head between his 
hands, “I thank you — thank you — kindly.” 

“ Ay, ay, to be sure : I thought you would, ” said Mr. Ma- 
cey ; “ and my advice is — have you got a Sunday suit? ” 

“ No,” said Marner. 

“I doubted it was so, ’’said Mr. Macey. “Now, let me ad- 
vise you to get a Sunday suit: there’s Tookey, he’s a poor 
creatur, but he’s got my tailoring business, and some o’ my 
money in it, and he shall make a suit at a low price, and give 
you trust, and then you can come to church, and be a bit 
neighborly. Why, you’ve never heared me say ‘ Amen ’ since 
you come into these parts, and I recommend you to lose no 
time, for it’ll be poor work when Tookey has it all to himself, 
for I mayn’t be equil to stand i’ the desk at all, come another 
winter.” Here Mr. Macey paused, perhaps expecting some 
sign of emotion in his hearer ; but not observing any, he went 
on. “ And as for the money for the suit o’ clothes, why, you 
get a matter of a pound a week at your weaving, Master Mar- 
ner, and you’re a young man, eh, for all you look so mushed. 
Why, you couldn’t ha’ been five and twenty when you come 
into these parts, eh?” 

Silas started a little at the change to a questioning tone, and 


SILAS MARNER. 83 

answered mildly, “I don’t know; I can’t rightly say — it’s a 
long while since.” 

After receiving such an answer as this, it is not surpris- 
ing that Mr. Macey observed, later on in the evening at the 
Rainbow, that Marner’s head was “all of a muddle,” and 
that it was to be doubted if he ever knew when Sunday 
came round, which showed him a worse heathen than many 
a dog. 

Another of Silas’s comforters, besides Mr. Macey, came to 
him with a mind highly charged on the same topic. This was 
Mrs. Winthrop, the wheelwright’s wife. The inhabitants of 
Raveloe were not severely regular in their church-going, and 
perhaps there was hardly a person in the parish who would 
not have held that to go to church every Sunday in the calen- 
dar would have shown a greedy desire to stand well with 
Heaven, and get an undue advantage over their neighbors — a 
wish to be better than the “common run,” that would have 
implied a reflection on those who had had godfathers and god- 
mothers as well as themselves, and had an equal right to the 
burying-service. At the same time, it was understood to be 
requisite for all who were not household servants, or young 
men, to take the sacrament at one of the great festivals: 
Squire Cass himself took it on Christmas Day ; while those 
who were held to be “ good livers ” went to church with great- 
er, though still with moderate, frequency. 

Mrs. Winthrop was one of these: she was in all respects a 
woman of scrupulous conscience, so eager for duties that life 
seemed to offer them too scantily unless she rose at half-past 
four, though this threw a scarcity of work over the more ad- 
vanced hours of the morning, which it was a constant problem 
with her to remove. Yet she had not the vixenish temper 
which is sometimes supposed to be a necessary condition of 
such habits : she was a very mild, patient woman, whose na- 
ture it was to seek out all the sadder and more serious elements 
of life, and pasture her mind upon them. She was the person 
always first thought of in Raveloe when there was illness or 
death in a family, when leeches were to be applied, or there 
was a sudden disappointment in a monthly nurse. She was 
a “ comfortable woman ” — good-looking, fresh-complexioned, 


84 


SILAS MARNER. 


having her lips always slightly screwed, as if she felt herself 
in a sick-room with the doctor or the clergyman present. But 
she was never whimpering; no one had seen her shed tears; 
she was simply grave and inclined to shake her head and sigh, 
almost imperceptibly, like a funereal mourner who is not a re- 
lation. It seemed surprising that Ben Winthrop, who loved 
his quart pot and his joke, got along so well with Dolly; but 
she took her husband’s jokes and joviality as patiently as 
everything else, considering that “men would be so,” and 
viewing the stronger sex in the light of animals whom it had 
pleased Heaven to make naturally troublesome, like bulls and 
turkey-cocks. 

This good wholesome woman could hardly fail to have her 
mind drawn strongly toward Silas Marner, now that he ap- 
peared in the light of a sufferer ; and one Sunday afternoon 
she took her little boy Aaron with her, and went to call on 
Silas, carrying in her hand some small lard-cakes, flat paste- 
like articles much esteemed in Raveloe. Aaron, an apple- 
cheeked youngster of seven, with a clean starched frill which 
looked like a plate for the apples, needed all his adventurous 
curiosity to embolden him against the possibility that the big- 
eyed weaver might do him some bodily injury; and his dubiety 
was much increased when, on arriving at the Stone-pits, they 
heard the mysterious sound of the loom. 

“Ah, it is as I thought,” said Mrs. Winthrop, sadly. 

They had to knock loudly before Silas heard them ; but when 
he did come to the door he showed no impatience, as he would 
once have done, at a visit that had been unasked for and un- 
expected. Formerly, his heart had been as a locked casket 
with its treasure inside ; but now the casket was empty, and 
the lock was broken. Left groping in darkness, with his prop 
utterly gone, Silas had inevitably a sense, though a dull and 
half-despairing one, that if any help came to him it must come 
from without; and there was a slight stirring of expectation 
at the sight of his fellow-men, a faint consciousness of depeud- 
ence on their good-will. He opened the door wide to admit 
Dolly, but without otherwise returning her greeting than by 
moving the arm-chair a few inches as a sign that she was to sit 
down in it. Dolly, as soon as she was seated, removed the 


SILAS MARKER. 85 

white cloth that covered her lard-cakes, and said in her grav- 
est way, — 

“ I’d a baking yisterday, Master Marner, and the lard- 
cakes turned out better nor common, and I’d ha’ asked you to 
accept some, if you’d thought well. I don’t eat such things 
myself, for a bit o’ bread’s what I like from one year’s end to 
the other; but men’s stomichs are made so comical, they want 
a change — they do, I know, God help ’em.” 

Dolly sighed gently as she held out the cakes to Silas, who 
thanked her kindly and looked very close at them, absently, 
being accustomed to look so at everything he took into his 
hand — eyed all the while by the wondering bright orbs of the 
small Aaron, who had made an outwork of his mother’s chair, 
and was peeping round from behind it. 

“There’s letters pricked on ’em,” said Dolly. “I can’t 
read ’em myself, and there’s nobody, not Mr. Macey himself, 
rightly knows what they mean; but they’ve a good meaning, 
*for they’re the same as is on the pulpit-cloth at church. What 
are they, Aaron, my dear? ” 

Aaron retreated completely behind his outwork. 

“ Oh, go, that’s naughty,” said his mother, mildly. “ Well, 
whativer the letters are, they’ve a good meaning; and it’s a 
stamp as has been in our house, Ben says, ever since he was a 
little un, and his mother used to put it on the cakes, and I’ve 
allays put it on too; for if there’s any good, we’ve need of it 
i’ this world.” 

“It’s I. H. S.,” said Silas, at which proof of learning Aaron 
peeped round the chair again. 

“Well, to be sure, you can read ’em off,” said Dolly. 
“ Ben’s read ’em to me many and many a time, but they slip 
out o’ my mind again; the more’s the pity, for they’re good 
letters, else they wouldn’t be in the church; and so I prick 
’em on all the loaves and all the cakes, though sometimes they 
won’t hold, because o’ the rising — for, as I said, if there’s any 
good to be got we’ve need of it i’ this world — that we have; 
and I hope they’ll bring good to you, Master Marner, for it’s 
wi’ that will I brought you the cakes ; and you see the letters 
have held better nor common.” 

Silas was as unable to interpret the letters as Dolly, but 


86 


SILAS MARKER. 


there was no possibility of misunderstanding the desire to give 
comfort that made itself heard in her quiet tones. He said, 
with more feeling than before — “ Thank you — thank you kind- 
ly.” But he laid down the cakes and seated himself absently 
— drearily unconscious of any distinct benefit toward which 
the cakes and the letters, or even Dolly’s kindness, could tend 
for him. 

“Ah, if there’s good anywhere, we’ve need of it,” repeated 
Dolly, who did not lightly forsake a serviceable phrase. She 
looked at Silas pityingly as she went on. “But you didn’t 
hear the church-bells this morning, Master Marner? I doubt 
you didn’t know it was Sunday. Living so lone here, you 
lose your count, I dare say : and then, when your loom makes 
a noise, you can’t hear the bells, more partic’lar now the frost 
kills the sound.” 

“Yes, I did; I heard ’em,” said Silas, to whom Sunday 
bells were a mere accident of the day, and not part of its 
sacredness. There had been no bells in Lantern Yard. 

“ Dear heart ! ” said Dolly, pausing before she spoke again. 
“ But what a pity it is you should work of a Sunday, and not 
clean yourself — if you didn't go to church; for if you’d a 
roasting bit, it might be as you couldn’t leave it, being a lone 
man. But there’s the bakehus, if you could make up your 
mind to spend a twopence on the oven now and then, — not 
every week, in course — I shouldn’t like to do that myself, — 
you might carry your bit o’ dinner there, for it’s nothing but 
right to have a bit o’ summat hot of a Sunday, and not to make 
it as you can’t know your dinner from Saturday. But now, 
upo’ Christmas Day, this blessed Christmas as is ever coming, 
if you was to take your dinner to the bakehus, and go to 
church, and see the holly and the yew, and hear the anthim, 
and then take the sacramen’, you’d be a deal the better, and 
you’d know which end you stood on, and you could put your 
trust i’ Them as knows better nor we do, seein’ you’d ha’ 
done what it lies on us all to do.” 

Dolly’s exhortation, which was an unusually long effort of 
speech for her, was uttered in the soothing persuasive tone 
with which she would have tried to prevail on a sick man to 
take his medicine or a basin of gruel for which he had no ap- 


SILAS MARKER. 


87 


petite. Silas had never before been closely urged on the point 
of his absence from church, which had only been thought of as 
a part of his general queerness; and he was too direct and 
simple to evade Dolly’s appeal. 

“Nay, nay,” he said, “I know nothing o’ church. I’ve 
never been to church.” 

“No! ” said Dolly, in a low tone of wonderment. Then, be- 
thinking herself of Silas’s advent from an unknown country, 
she said, “ Could it ha’ been as they’ d no church where you 
was born? ” 

“ Oh, yes, ” said Silas, meditatively, sitting in his usual pos- 
ture of leaning on his knees, and supporting his head. “ There 
was churches — a many — it was a big town. But I knew noth- 
ing of ’em — I went to chapel.” 

Dolly was much puzzled at this new word, but she was 
rather afraid of inquiring further, lest “ chapel ” might mean 
some haunt of wickedness. After a little thought, she said, — 

“ Well, Master Marner, it’s niver too late to turn over a new 
leaf, and if you’ve niver had no church, there’s no telling the 
good it ’ll do you. For I feel so set up and comfortable as 
niver was when I’ve been and heard the prayers, and the 
singing to the praise and glory o’ God, as Mr. Macey gives 
out — and Mr. Crackenthorp saying good words, and more par- 
tic’ lar on Sacramen’ Day; and if a bit o’ trouble comes, I feel 
as I can put up wi’ it, for I’ve looked for help i’ the right 
quarter, and gev myself up to Them as we must all give our- 
selves up to at the last; and if we’n done our part, it isn’t to 
be believed as Them as are above us ’ull be worse nor we are, 
and come short o’ Their’n.” 

Poor Dolly’s exposition of her simple Raveloe theology fell 
rather unmeaningly on Silas’s ears, for there was no word in 
it that could rouse a memory of what he had known as relig- 
ion, and ' his comprehension was quite baffled by the plural 
pronoun, which was no heresy of Dolly’s, but only her way of 
avoiding a presumptuous familiarity. He remained silent, 
not feeling inclined to assent to the part of Dolly’s speech 
which he fully understood — her recommendation that he 
should go to church. Indeed, Silas was so unaccustomed to 
talk beyond the brief questions and answers necessary for the 


88 


SILAS MARKER. 


transaction of his simple business that words did not easily 
come to him without the urgency of a distinct purpose. 

But now, little Aaron, having become used to the weaver’s 
awful presence, had advanced to his mother’ s side, and Silas, 
seeming to notice him for the first time, tried to return Dolly’s 
signs of good-will by offering the lad a bit of lard-cake. Aaron 
shrank back a little, and rubbed his head against his mother’s 
shoulder, but still thought . the piece of cake worth the risk of 
putting his hand out for it. 

“Oh, for shame, Aaron,” said his mother, taking him on 
her lap, however; “why, you don’t want cake again yet 
awhile. He’s wonderful hearty,” she went on, with a little 
sigh — “that he is, God knows. He’s my youngest, and we 
spoil him sadly, for either me or the father must allays hev 
him in our sight — that we must.” 

She stroked Aaron’s brown head, and thought it must do 
Master Marner good to see such a “ pictur of a child.” But 
Marner, on the other side of the hearth, saw the neat-featured 
rosy face as a mere dim round, with two dark spots in it. 

“And he’s got a voice like a bird — you wouldn’t think,” 
Dolly went on; “ he can sing a Christmas carril as his father’s 
taught him ; and I take it for a token as he’ll come to good, as 
he can learn the good tunes so quick. Come, Aaron, stan’ up 
and sing the carril to Master Marner, come.” 

Aaron replied by rubbing his forehead against his mother’s 
shoulder. 

“Oh, that’s naughty,” said Dolly, gently. “Stan’ up, 
when mother tells you, and let me hold the cake till you’ve 
done.” 

Aaron was not indisposed to display his talents, even to an 
ogre, under protecting circumstances; and after a few more 
signs of coyness, consisting chiefly in rubbing the backs of his 
hands over his eyes, and then peeping between them at Master 
Marner, to see if he looked anxious for the “carril,” he at 
length allowed his head to be duly adjusted, and standing be- 
hind the table, which let him appear above it only as far as 
his broad frill, so that he looked like a cherubic head untrou- 
bled with a body, he began with a clear chirp, and in a melody 
that had the rhythm of an industrious hammer, — 


SILAS MARNER. 


89 


“ God rest you, merry gentlemen, 

Let nothing you dismay. 

For Jesus Christ our Saviour 
Was born on Christmas Day. ” 

Dolly listened with a devout look, glancing at Marner in 
some confidence that this strain would help to allure him to 
church. 

“That’s Christmas music,” she said, when Aaron had end- 
ed, and had secured his piece of cake again. “There’s no 
other music equil to the Christmas music — ‘ Hark the erol 
angils sing.’ And you may judge what it is at church, Mas- 
ter Marner, with the bassoon and the voices, as you can’t help 
thinking you’ve got to a better place a’ ready — for I wouldn’t 
speak ill o’ this world, seeing as Them put us in it as knows 
best — but what wi’ the drink, and the quarrelling, and the 
bad illnesses, and the hard dying, as I’ve, seen times and 
times, one’s thankful to hear of a better. The boy sings 
pretty, don’t he, Master Marner? ” 

“Yes,” said Silas, absently, “very pretty.” 

The Christmas carol, with its hammer-like rhythm, had fall- 
en on his ears as strange music, quite unlike a hymn, and 
could have none of the effect Dolly contemplated. But he 
wanted to show her that he was grateful, and the only mode 
that occurred to him was to offer Aaron a bit more cake. 

“ Oh, no, thank you, Master Marner, ” said Dolly, holding 
down Aaron’s willing hands. “ We must be going home now. 
And so I wish you good-by, Master Marner ; and if you ever 
feel anyways bad in your inside, as you can’t fend for yourself, 
I’ll come and clean up for you, and get you a bit o’ victual, 
and willing. But I beg and pray of you to leave off weaving 
of a Sunday, for it’s bad for soul and body — and the money as 
comes i’ that way ’ull be a bad bed to lie down on at the last, 
if it doesn’t fly away, nobody knows where, like the white 
frost. And you’ll excuse me being that free with you, Mas- 
ter Marner, for I wish you well — I do. Make your bow, 
Aaron.” 

Silas said “Good-by, and thank you kindly,” as he opened 
the door for Dolly, but he couldn’t help feeling relieved when 
she was gone — relieved that he might weave again and moan 


90 


SILAS MARKER. 


at his ease. Her simple view of life and its comforts, by 
which she had tried to cheer him, was only like a report of 
unknown objects which his imagination could not fashion. 
The fountains of human love and of faith in a divine love had 
not yet been unlocked, and his soul was still the shrunken riv- 
ulet, with only this difference, that its little groove of sand 
was blocked up, and it wandered confusedly against dark ob- 
struction. 

And so, notwithstanding the honest persuasions of Mr. Ma- 
cey and Dolly Winthrop, Silas spent his Christmas Day in 
loneliness, eating his meat in sadness of heart, though the 
meat had come to him as a neighborly present. In the morn- 
ing he looked out on the black frost that seemed to pre^s 
cruelly on every blade of grass, while the half -icy red pool 
shivered under the bitter wind ; but toward evening the snow 
began to fall, and curtained from him even that dreary out- 
look, shutting him close up with his narrow grief. And he 
sat in Lis robbed home through the livelong evening, not car- 
ing to close his shutters or lock his door, pressing his head 
between his hands and moaning, till the cold grasped him and 
told him that his fire was gray. 

Nobody in this world but himself knew that he was the 
same Silas Marner who had once loved his fellow with tender 
love, and trusted in an unseen goodness. Even to himself 
that past experience had become dim. 

But in Raveloe village the bells rang merrily, and the 
church was fuller than all through the rest of the year, with 
red faces among the abundant dark-green boughs — faces pre- 
pared for a longer service than usual by an odorous breakfast 
of toast and ale. Those green boughs, the hymn and anthem 
never heard but at Christmas — even the Athanasian Creed, 
which was discriminated from the others only as being longer 
and of exceptional virtue, since it was only read on rare occa- 
sions — brought a vague exulting sense, for which the grown 
men could as little have found words as the children, that 
something great and mysterious had been done for them in 
heaven above and in earth below, which they were appropri- 
ating by their presence. And then the red faces made their 
way through the black biting frost to their own homes, feeling 


SILAS MARNER. 91 

themselves free for the rest of the day to eat, drink, and be 
merry, and using that Christian freedom without diffidence. 

At Squire Cass’s family party that day nobody mentioned 
Dunstan — nobody was sorry for his absence, or feared it would 
be too long. The doctor and his wife, uncle and aunt Kimble, 
were there, and the annual Christmas talk was carried through 
without any omissions, rising to the climax of Mr. Kimble’s 
experience when he walked the London hospitals thirty years 
back, together with striking professional anecdotes then 
gathered. Whereupon cards followed, with aunt Kimble’s 
annual failure to follow suit, and uncle Kimble’s irascibility 
concerning the odd trick, which was rarely explicable to him, 
when it was not on his side, without a general visitation of 
tricks to see that they were formed on sound principles : the 
whole being accompanied by a strong steaming odor of spirits- 
and-water. 

But the party on Christmas Day, being a strictly family 
party, was not the pre-eminently brilliant celebration of the 
season at the Red House. It was the great dance on New 
Year’s Eve that made the glory of Squire Cass’s hospitality, 
as of his forefathers’, time out of mind. This was the occa- 
sion when all the society of Raveloe and Tarley, whether old 
acquaintances separated by long rutty distances, or cooled 
acquaintances separated by misunderstandings concerning run- 
away calves, or acquaintances founded on intermittent conde- 
scension, counted on meeting and on comporting themselves 
with mutual appropriateness. This was the occasion on which 
fair dames who came on pillions sent their bandboxes before 
them, supplied with more than their evening costume ; for the 
feast was not to end with a single evening, like a paltry town 
entertainment, where the whole supply of eatables is put on 
the table at once, and bedding is scanty. The Red House was 
provisioned as if for a siege; and as for the spare feather 
beds ready to be laid on floors, they were as plentiful as might 
naturally be expected in a family that had killed its own geese 
for many generations. 

Godfrey Cass was looking forward to this New Year’s Eve 
with a foolish reckless longing that made him half deaf to his 
importunate companion, Anxiety. 


92 


SILAS MARKER. 


“Dunsey will be coming home soon: there will be a great 
blow-up, and how will you bribe his spite to silence? ” said 
Anxiety. 

“ Oh, he won’t come home before New Year’s Eve, perhaps,” 
said Godfrey ; “ and I shall sit by Nancy then, and dance with 
her, and get a kind look from her in spite of herself.” 

“ But money is wanted in another quarter, ” said Anxiety, 
in a louder voice, “and how- will you get it without selling 
your mother’s diamond pin? And if you don’t get it . . . ? ” 

“ Well, but something may happen to make things easier. 
At any rate, there’s one pleasure for me close at hand: Nancy 
is coming.” 

“ Yes, and suppose your father should bring matters to a 
pass that will oblige you to decline marrying her— and to give 
your reasons? ” 

“Hold your tongue, and don’t worry me. I can see 
Nancy’s eyes, just as they will look at me, and feel her hand 
in mine already.” 

But Anxiety went on, though in noisy Christmas company ; 
refusing to be utterly quieted even by much drinking. 


CHAPTER XI. 

Some women, I grant, would not appear to advantage seated 
on a pillion, and attired in a drab joseph and a drab beaver- 
bonnet, with a crown resembling a small stew-pan; for a gar- 
ment suggesting a coachman’s greatcoat, cut out under an exi- 
guity of cloth that would only allow of miniature capes, is not 
well adapted to conceal deficiencies of contour, nor is drab a 
color that will throw sallow cheeks into lively contrast. It 
was all the greater triumph to Miss Nancy Lammeter’s beauty 
that she looked thoroughly bewitching in that costume, as, 
seated on the pillion behind her tall, erect father, she held one 
arm round him, and looked down, with open-eyed anxiety, at 
the treacherous snow-covered pools and puddles, which sent 
up formidable splashings of mud under the stamp of Dobbin’s 
foot. A painter would, perhaps, have preferred her in those 


SILAS MARKER. 


93 


moments when she was free from self-consciousness ; but cer- 
tainly the bloom on her cheeks was at its highest point of con- 
trast with rhe surrounding drab when she arrived at the door 
of the Red House, and saw Mr. Godfrey Cass ready to lift 
her from the pillion. She wished her sister Priscilla had come 
up at the same time behind the servant, for then she would 
have contrived that Mr. Godfrey should have lifted off Pris- 
cilla first, and, in the mean time, she would have persuaded 
her father to go round to the horse-block instead of alighting 
at the door-steps. It was very painful, when you had made it 
quite clear to a young man that you were determined not to 
marry him, however much he might wish it, that he would 
still continue to pay you marked attentions; besides, why 
didn’t he always show the same attentions, if he meant them 
sincerely, instead of being so strange as Mr. Godfrey Cass was, 
sometimes behaving as if he didn’t want to speak to her, and 
taking no notice of her for weeks and weeks, and then, all on 
a sudden, almost making love again? Moreover, it was quite 
plain he had no real love for her, else he would not let people 
have that to say of him which they did say. Did he suppose 
that Miss Nancy Lammeter was to be won by any man, squire 
or no squire, who led a bad life? That was not what she had 
been used to see in her own father, who was the soberest and 
best man in that country-side, only a little hot and hasty now 
and then, if things were not done to the minute. 

All these thoughts rushed through Miss Nancy’s mind, in 
their habitual succession, in the moments between her first 
sight of Mr. Godfrey Cass standing at the door and her own 
arrival there. Happily, the Squire came out too and gave a 
loud greeting to her father, so that, somehow, under cover of 
this noise she seemed to find concealment for her confusion 
and neglect of any suitably formal behavior, while she was 
being lifted from the pillion by strong arms which seemed to 
find her ridiculously small and light. And there was the best 
reason for hastening into the house at once, since the snow was 
beginning to fall again, threatening an unpleasant journey for 
such guests as were still on the road. These were a small 
minority ; for already the afternoon was beginning to decline, 
and there would not be too much timiot in he ladies who came 


94 




SILAS MARKER. 


from a distance to attire themselves in readiness for the early 
tea which was to inspirit them for the dance. 

There was a buzz of voices through the house, as Miss Nancy 
entered, mingled with the scrape of a fiddle preluding in the 
kitchen 5 but the Lammeters were guests whose arrival had 
evidently been thought of so much that it had been watched 
for from the windows, for Mrs. Kimble, who did the honorS at 
the Red House on these great occasions, came forward to meet 
Miss Nancy in the hall, and conduct her upstairs. Mrs. 
Kimble was the Squire’s sister, as well as the doctor’s wife 
— a double dignity, with which her diameter was in direct 
proportion; so that, a journey upstairs being rather fatiguing 
to her, she did not oppose Miss Nancy’s request to be allowed 
to find her way alone to the Blue Room, where the Miss Lam- 
meters’ bandboxes had been deposited on their arrival in the 
morning. 

There was hardly a bedroom in the house where feminine 
compliments were not passing and feminine toilets going for- 
ward, in various stages, in space made scanty by extra beds 
spread upon the floor; and Miss Nancy, as she entered the 
Blue Room, had to make her little formal courtesy to a group 
of six. On the one hand, there were ladies no less important 
than the two Miss Gunns, the wine merchant’s daughters from 
Lytherly, dressed in the height of fashion, with the tightest 
skirts and the shortest waists, and gazed at by Miss Ladbrook 
(of the Old Pastures) with a shyness not unsustained by inward 
criticism. Partly, Miss Ladbrook felt that her own skirt must 
be regarded as unduly lax by the Miss Gunns, and partly, 
that it was a pity the Miss Gunns did not show that judgment 
which she herself would show if she were in their place, by 
stopping a little on this side of the fashion. On the other 
hand, Mrs. Ladbrook was standing in skull-cap and front, with 
her turban in her hand, courtesying and smiling blandly and 
saying, “After you, ma’am,” to another lady in similar cir- 
cumstances, who had politely offered the precedence at the 
looking-glass. 

But Miss Nancy had no sooner made her courtesy than an 
elderly lady came Toward, whose full white muslin kerchief, 
and mob-cap roun^uld, pu ls of smooth gray hair, were in dar- 


SILAS MARNER. 


95 


ing contrast with the puffed yellow satins and top-knotted caps 
of her neighbors. She approached Miss Nancy with much 
primness, and said, with a slow, treble suavity, — 

“Niece, I hope I see you well in health.” Miss Nancy 
kissed her aunt’s cheek dutifully, and answered, with the 
same sort of amiable primness, “Quite well, I thank you, 
aunt; and I hope I see you the same.” 

“ Thank you, niece ; I keep my health for the present. And 
how is my brother-in-law?” 

These dutiful questions and answers were continued until it 
was ascertained in detail that the Lammeters were all as well 
as usual, and the Osgoods likewise, also that niece Priscilla 
must certainly arrive shortly, and that travelling on pillions 
in snowy weather was unpleasant, though a joseph was a great 
protection. Then Nancy was formally introduced to her aunt’s 
visitors, the Miss Gunns, as being the daughters of a mother 
known to their mother, though now for the first time induced 
to make a journey into these parts; and these ladies were so 
taken by surprise at finding such a lovely face and figure in an 
out-of-the-way country place that they began to feel some 
curiosity about the dress she would put on when she took off 
her joseph. Miss Nancy, whose thoughts were always con- 
ducted with the propriety and moderation conspicuous in her 
manners, remarked to herself that the Miss Gunns were rather 
hard-featured than otherwise, and that such very low dresses 
as they wore might have been attributed to vanity if their 
shoulders had been pretty, but that, being as they were, it 
was not reasonable to suppose that they showed their necks 
from a love of display, but rather from some obligation not 
inconsistent with sense and modesty. She felt convinced, as 
she opened her box, that this must be her aunt Osgood’s 
opinion, for Miss Nancy’s mind resembled her aunt’s to a de- 
gree that everybody said was surprising ; considering the kin- 
ship was on Mr. Osgood’s side; and, though you might not 
have supposed it from the formality of their greeting, there 
was a devoted attachment and mutual admiration between aunt 
and niece. Even Miss Nancy’s refusal of her cousin Gilbert 
Osgood (on the ground solely that he was her cousin), though 
it had grieved her aunt greatly, had not in the least cooled the 


96 


SILAS MARNER. 


preference which had determined her to leave Nancy several 
of her hereditary ornaments, let Gilbert’s future wife be whom 
she might. 

Three of the ladies quickly retired, but the Miss Gunns were 
quite content that Mrs. Osgood’s inclination to remain with 
her niece gave them also a reason for staying to see the rustic 
beauty’s toilet. And it was really a pleasure — from the first 
opening of the bandbox, where everything smelt of lavender 
and rose-leaves, to the clasping of the small coral necklace 
that fitted closely round her little white neck. Everything 
belonging to Miss Nancy was of delicate purity and nattiness : 
not a crease was where it had no business to be, not a bit of 
her linen professed whiteness without fulfilling its profession; 
the very pins on her pincushion were stuck in after a pattern 
from which she was careful to allow no aberration ; and as for 
her own person, it gave the same idea of perfect unvarying 
neatness as the body of a little bird. It is true that her light- 
brown hair was cropped behind like a boy’s, and was dressed 
in front in a number of flat rings, that lay quite away from 
her face ; but there was no sort of coiffure that could make 
Miss Nancy’s cheek and neck look otherwise than pretty; and 
when at last she stood complete in her silvery twilled silk, her 
lace tucker, her coral necklace and coral ear-drops, the Miss 
Gunns could see nothing to criticise except her hands, which 
bore the traces of butter-making, cheese-crushiug, and even 
still coarser work. But Miss Nancy was not ashamed of that, 
for while she was dressing she narrated to her aunt how she 
and Priscilla had packed their boxes yesterday, because this 
morning was baking morning, and since they were leaving 
home, it was desirable to make a good supply of meat-pies for 
the kitchen; and as she concluded this judicious remark, she 
turned to the Miss Gunns that she might not commit the rude- 
ness of not including them in the conversation. The Miss 
Gunns smiled stiffly, and thought what a pity it was that these 
rich country people, who could afford to buy such good clothes 
(really Miss Nancy’s lace and silk were very costly), should 
be brought up in utter ignorance and vulgarity. She actually 
said “ mate ” for “ meat,” “ ’appen ” for “ perhaps,” and “ oss ” 
for “ horse, ” which, to young ladies living in good Lytherly 


SILAS MARNER. 


97 


society, who habitually said ’orse, even in domestic privacy, 
and only said ’appen on the right occasions, was necessarily 
shocking. Miss Nancy, indeed, had never been to any school 
higher than Dame Tedman’s: her acquaintance with profane 
literature hardly went beyond the rhymes she had worked in 
her large sampler under the lamb and the shepherdess ; and in 
order to balance an account she was obliged to effect her sub- 
traction by removing visible metallic shillings and sixpences 
from a visible metallic total. There is hardly a servant-maid 
in these days who is not better informed than Miss Nancy ; yet 
she had the essential attributes of a lady — high veracity, deli- 
cate honor in her dealings, deference to others, and refined 
personal habits, — and lest these should not suffice to convince 
grammatical fair ones that her feelings can at all resemble 
theirs, I will add that she was slightly proud and exacting, 
-and as constant in her affection toward a baseless opinion as 
toward an erring lover. 

The anxiety about sister Priscilla, which had grown rather 
active by the time the coral necklace was clasped, was happi- 
ly ended by the entrance of that cheerful-looking lady herself, 
with a face made blowsy by cold and damp. After the first 
questions and greetings, she turned to Nancy, and surveyed 
her from head to foot — then wheeled her round, to ascertain 
that the back view was equally faultless. 

“What do you think o’ these gowns, aunt Osgood?” said 
Priscilla, while Nancy helped her to unrobe. 

“Very handsome indeed, niece,” said Mrs. Osgood, with a 
slight increase of formality. She always thought niece Pris- 
cilla too rough. 

“ I’m obliged to have the same as Nancy, you know, for all 
I’m five years older, and it makes me look yallow; for she 
never will have anything without I have mine just like it, 
because she wants us to look like sisters. And I tell her, folks 
’ull think it’s tny weakness makes me fancy as I shall look 
pretty in what she looks pretty in. For I am ugly — there’s 
no denying that: I feature my father’s family. But, law! I 
don’t mind, do you?” Priscilla here turned to the Miss 
Gunns, rattling on in too much preoccupation with the delight 
of talking to notice that her candor was not appreciated. 
7 


98 


SILAS MARNER. 


“ The pretty uns do for fly-catchers — they keep the men off 
us. I’ve no opinion o’ the men, Miss Gunn — I don’t know 
what you have. And as for fretting and stewing about what 
they’ll think of you from morning till night, and making your 
life uneasy about what they’re doing when they’re out o’ your 
sight — as I tell Nancy, it’s a folly no woman need be guilty 
of, if she’s got a good father and a good home : let her leave it 
to them as have got no fortin, and can’t help themselves. As 
I say, Mr. Have-your-own-way is the best husband, and the 
only one I’d ever promise to obey. I know it isn’t pleasant, 
when you’ve been used to living in a big way, and managing 
hogsheads and all that, to go and put your nose in by some- 
body else’s fireside, or to sit down by yourself to a scrag or a 
knuckle; but, thank Goa! my father’s a sober man and likely 
to live ; and if you’ve got a man by the chimney-corner, it 
doesn’t matter if he’s childish — the business needn’t be broke 
up.” 

The delicate process of getting her narrow gown over her 
head without injury to her smooth curls obliged Miss Pris- 
cilla to pause in this rapid survey of life, and Mrs. Osgood 
seized the opportunity of rising and saying, — 

“ Well, niece, you’ll follow us. The Miss Gunns will like 
to go down.” 

“ Sister,” said Nancy, when they were alone, “you’ve 
offended the Miss Gunns, I’m sure.” 

“ What have I done, child? ” said Priscilla, in some alarm. 

“ Why, you asked them if they minded about being ugly — 
you’re so very blunt.” 

“Law, did I? Well, it popped out: it’s a mercy I said no 
more, for I’m a bad un to live with folks when they don’t like 
the truth. But as for being ugly, look at me, child, in this 
silver-colored silk — I told you how it ’ud be — I look as yallow 
as a daffadil. Anybody ’ud say you wanted to make a maw- 
kin of me.” * 

“ No, Priscy, don’t say so. I begged and prayed of you not 
to let us have this silk if you’d like another better. I was 
willing to have your choice, you know I was,” said Nancy, in 
anxious self -vindication. 

“Nonsense, child! you know you’d set your heart on thisj 


SILAS MARNER. 


99 


and reason good, for you’re the color o’ cream. It ’ud be fine 
doings for you to dress yourself to suit my skin. What I find 
fault with is that notion o’ yours as I must dress myself just 
like you. But you do as you like with me — you always did, 
from when first you begun to walk. If you wanted to go the 
field’s length, you’d go; and there was no whipping you, for 
you looked as prim and innicent as a daisy all the while.” 

“Priscy,” said Nancy, gently, as she fastened a coral neck- 
lace, exactly like her own, round Priscilla’s neck, which was 
very far from being like her own, “I’m sure I’m willing to 
give way as far as is right, but who shouldn’t dress alike if it 
isn’t sisters? Would you have us go about looking as if we 
were no kin to one another — us that have got no mother and 
not another sister in the world? I’d do what was right, if I 
dressed in a gown dyed with cheese-coloring; and I’d rather 
you’d choose, and let me wear what pleases you.” 

“ There you go again ! You’d come round to the same thing 
if one talked to you from Saturday night till Saturday morn- 
ing. It will be fine fun to see how you’ll master your husband 
and never raise your voice above the singing o’ the kettle all 
the while. I like to see the men mastered! ” 

“Don’t talk so, Priscy,” said Nancy, blushing. “You 
know I don’t mean ever to be married.” 

“Oh, you never mean a fiddlestick’s end!” said Priscilla, 
as she arranged her discarded dress, and closed her bandbox. 
“ Who shall /have to work for when father’s gone, if you are 
to go and take notions in your head and be an old maid, be- 
cause some folks are no better than they should be? I haven’t 
a bit o’ patience with you — sitting on an addled egg forever, 
as if there was never a fresh un in the world. One old maid’s 
enough out o’ two sisters ; and I shall do credit to a single life, 
for God A’ mighty meant me for it. Come, we can go down 
now. I’m as ready as a mawkin can be — there’s nothing 
a- wanting to frighten the crows, now I’ve got my ear-drop- 
pers in.” 

As the two Miss Lammeters walked into the large parlor 
together, any one who did not know the character of both 
might certainly have supposed that the reason why the 
square-shouldered, clumsy, high-featured Priscilla wore a dress 

LofC. 


100 


SILAS MARNER. 


the fac-simile of her pretty sister’s was either the mistaken 
vanity of the one, or the malicious contrivance of the other in 
order to set off her own rare beauty. But the good-natured 
self-forgetful cheeriness and common sense of Priscilla would 
soon have dissipated the one suspicion ; and the modest calm 
of Nancy’s speech and manners told clearly of a mind free 
from all disavowed devices. 

Places of honor had been kept for the Miss Lammeters near 
the head of the principal tea-table in the wainscoted parlor, 
now looking fresh and pleasant with handsome branches of 
holly, yew, and laurel, from the abundant growths of the old 
garden ; and Nancy felt an inward flutter, that no firmness of 
purpose could prevent, when she saw Mr. Godfrey Cass ad- 
vancing to lead her to a seat between himself and Mr. Crack- 
enthorp. while Priscilla was called to the opposite side between 
her father and the Squire. ‘It certainly did make some differ- 
ence to Nancy that the lover she had given up was the young 
man of quite the highest consequence in the parish — at home 
in a venerable and unique parlor, which was the extremity of 
grandeur in her experience, a parlor where she might one day 
have been mistress, with the consciousness that she was spoken 
of as “ Madam Cass,” the Squire’s wife. These circumstances 
exalted her inward drama in her own eyes, and deepened the 
emphasis with which she declared to herself that not the most 
dazzling rank should induce her to marry a man whose, con- 
duct showed him careless of his character, but that “love 
once, love always,” was the motto of a true and pure woman, 
and no man should ever have any right over her which would 
be a call on her to destroy the dried flowers that she treasured, 
and always would treasure, for Godfrey Cass’s sake. And 
Nancy was capable of keeping her word to herself under very 
trying conditions. Nothing but a becoming blush betrayed the 
moving thoughts that urged themselves upon her as she ac- 
cepted the seat next to Mr. Crackenthorp ; for she was so in- 
stinctively neat and adroit in all her actions, and her pretty 
lips met each other with such quiet firmness, that it would 
have been difficult for her to appear agitated. 

It was not the Rector’s practice to let a charming blush pass 
without an appropriate compliment. He was not in the least 


SILAS MARNER. 


101 


lofty or aristocratic, but simply a merry-eyed, small-featured, 
gray -haired man, with his chin propped by an ample rnany- 
creased white neckcloth which seemed to predominate over 
every other point in his person, and somehow to impress its 
peculiar character on his remarks ; so that to have considered 
his amenities apart from his cravat would have been a severe, 
and perhaps a dangerous, effort of abstraction. 

“Ha, Miss Nancy,” he said, turning his head within his 
cravat and smiling down pleasantly upon her, “ when anybody 
pretends this has been a severe winter, I shall tell them I saw 
the roses blooming on New Year’s Eve — eh, Godfrey, what do 
you say ? ” 

Godfrey made no reply, and avoided looking at Nancy very 
markedly ; for though these complimentary personalities were 
held to be in excellent taste in old-fashioned Raveloe society, 
reverent love has a politeness of its own which it teaches to 
men otherwise of small schooling. But the Squire was rather 
impatient at Godfrey’s showing himself a dull spark in this 
way. By this advanced hour of the day, the Squire was al- 
ways in higher spirits than we have seen him in at the break- 
fast-table, and felt it quite pleasant to fulfil the hereditary 
duty of being noisily jovial and patronizing: the large silver 
snuff-box was in active service and was offered without fail to 
all neighbors from time to time, however often they might 
have declined the favor. At present, the Squire had only 
given an express welcome to the heads of families as they ap- 
peared ; but always as the evening deepened his hospitality 
rayed out more widely, till he had tapped the youngest guests 
on the back and shown a peculiar fondness for their presence, 
in the full belief that they must feel their lives made happy by 
their belonging to a parish where there was such a hearty man 
as Squire Cass to invite them and wish them well. Even in 
this early stage of the jovial mood, it was natural that he 
should wish to supply his son’s deficiencies by looking and 
speaking for him. 

“Ay, ay,” he began, offering his snuff-box to Mr. Lamme* 
ter, who for the second time bowed his head and waved his 
hand in stiff rejection of the offer, “us old fellows may wish 
ourselves young to-night, when we see the mistletoe-bough in 


102 


SILAS MARKER. 


the White Parlor. It’s true, most things are gone back’ard 
in these last thirty years — the country’s going down since the 
old king fell ill. But when I look at Miss Nancy here, I be- 
gin to think the lasses keep up their quality ; — ding me if I 
remember a sample to match her, not when I was a fine young 
fellow, and thought a deal about my pigtail. No offence to 
you, madam,” he added, bending to Mrs. Crackenthorp, who 
sat by him, “I didn’t know you when you were as young as 
Miss Nancy here.” 

Mrs. Crackenthorp — a small blinking woman, who fidgeted 
incessantly with her lace, ribbons, and gold chain, turning her 
head about and making subdued noises, very much like a 
guinea-pig that twitches its nose and soliloquizes in all com- 
pany indiscriminately — now blinked and fidgeted toward the 
Squire, and said, “Oh, no — no offence.” 

This emphatic compliment of the Squire’s to Nancy was 
felt by others besides Godfrey to have a diplomatic signifi- 
cance; and her father gave a slight additional erectness to his 
back, as he looked across the table at her with complacent 
gravity. That grave and orderly senior was not going to bate 
a jot of his dignity by seeming elated at the notion of a match 
between his family and the Squire’s: he was gratified by any 
honor paid to his daughter; but he must see an alteration in 
several ways before his consent would be vouchsafed. His 
spare but healthy person, and high-featured firm face, that 
looked as if it had never been flushed by excess, was in strong 
contrast, not only with the Squire’s, but with the appearance 
of the Raveloe farmers generally — in accordance with a favor- 
ite saying of his own, that “ breed was stronger than pasture. ” 

" Miss Nancy’s wonderful like what her mother was, though; 
isn’t she, Kimble? ” said the stout lady of that name, looking 
round for her husband. 

But Doctor Kimble (country apothecaries in old days enjoyed 
that title without authority of diploma), being a thin and agile 
man, was flitting about the room with his hands in his pock- 
ets, making himself agreeable to his feminine patients, with 
medical impartiality, and being welcomed everywhere as a doc- 
tor by hereditary right — not one of those miserable apotheca- 
ries who canvass for practice in strange neighborhoods, and 


SILAS MARNER. 


103 


spend all their income in starving their one horse, but a man 
of substance, able to keep an extravagant table like the best of 
his patients. Time out of mind the Raveloe doctor had been 
a Kimble; Kimble was inherently a doctor’s name; and it 
was difficult to contemplate firmly the melancholy fact that 
the actual Kimble had no son, so that his practice might one 
day be handed over to a successor with the incongruous name 
of Taylor or Johnson. But in that case the wiser peo- 
ple in Raveloe would Employ Dr. Blick of Flitton — as less 
unnatural. 

“Did you speak to me, my dear?” said the authentic doc- 
tor, coming quickly to his wife’s side; but, as if foreseeing 
that she would be too much out of breath to repeat her remark, 
he went on immediately — “Ha, Miss Priscilla, the sight of 
you revives the taste of that superexcellent pork-pie. I hope 
the batch isn’t near an end.” 

“ Yes, indeed, it is, doctor,” said Priscilla; “ but I’ll answer 
for it the next shall be as good. My pork -pies don’t turn out 
well by chance.” 

“Not as your doctoring does, eh, Kimble? — because folks 
forget to take your physic, eh?” said the Squire, who regarded 
physic and doctors as many loyal churchmen regard the church 
and the clergy — tasting a joke against them when he was in 
health, but impatiently eager for their aid when anything was 
the matter with him. He tapped his box, and looked round 
with a triumphant laugh. 

“Ah, she has a quick wit, my friend Priscilla has,” said 
the doctor, choosing to attribute the epigram to a lady rather 
than allow a brother-in-law that advantage over him. “ She 
saves a little pepper to sprinkle over her talk — that’s the rea- 
son why she never puts too much into her pies. There’s my 
wife, now, she never has an answer at her tongue’s end; but 
if I offend her, she’s sure to scarify my throat with black pep- 
per the next day, or else give me the colic with watery greens. 
That’ s an awful tit-for-tat. ” Here the vivacious doctor made 
a pathetic grimace. 

“Did you ever hear the like?” said Mrs. Kimble, laughing 
above her double chin with much good humor, aside to Mrs. 
Crackenthorp, who blinked and nodded, and amiably intended 


104 


SILAS MARNER. 


to smile, but the intention lost itself in small twitchings and 
noises. 

“I suppose that’s the sort of tit-for-tat adopted in your pro- 
fession, Kimble, if you’ve a grudge against a patient, ’’ said 
the Rector. 

“Never do have a grudge against our patients,” said Mr. 
Kimble, “ except when they leave ns : and then, you see, we 
haven’t the chance of prescribing for ’em. Ha, Miss Nancy,” 
he continued, suddenly skipping to Nancy’s side, “you won’t 
forget your promise? You’re to save a dance for me, you know.” 

“Come, come, Kimble, don’t you be too for’ard,” said the 
Squire. “Give the young uns fair play. There’s my son 
Godfrey’ 11 be wanting to have a round with you if you run off 
with Miss Nancy. He’s bespoke her for the first dance, I’ll 
be bound. Eh, sir! what do you say?” he continued, throw- 
ing himself backward, and looking at Godfrey. “Haven’t 
you asked Miss Nancy to open the dance with you?” 

Godfrey, sorely uncomfortable under this significant insist- 
ence about Nancy, and afraid to think where it would end by 
the time his father had set his usual hospitable example of 
drinking before and after supper, saw no course open but to 
turn to Nancy and say, with as little awkwardness as possi- 
ble, — 

“No; I’ve not asked her yet, but I hope she’ll consent — if 
somebody else hasn’t been before me.” 

“ No, I’ve not engaged myself,” said Nancy, quietly, though 
blushingly. (If Mr. Godfrey founded any hopes on her con- 
senting to dance with him, he would soon be undeceived ; but 
there was no need for her to be uncivil.) 

“Then I hope you’ve no objections to dancing with me,” 
said Godfrey, beginning to lose the sense that there was any- 
thing uncomfortable in this arrangement. 

“No, no objections,” said Nancy, in a cold tone. 

“Ah, well, you’re a lucky fellow, Godfrey,” said uncle 
Kimble; “but you’re my godson, so I won’t stand in your 
way. Else I’m not so very old, eh, my dear? ” he went on, 
skipping to his wife’s side again. “You wouldn’t mind my 
having a second after you were gone — not if I cried a good 
deal first? ” 


SILAS MARNER. 


105 


“Come, come, take a cup o’ tea and stop your tongue, do,” 
said good-humored Mrs. Kimble, feeling some pride in a hus- 
band who must be regarded as so clever and amusing by the 
company generally. If he had only not been irritable at 
cards! 

While safe, well-tested personalities were enlivening the tea 
in this way, the sound of the fiddle approaching within a dis- 
tance at which it could be heard distinctly made the young 
people look at each other with sympathetic impatience for the 
end of the meal. 

“ Why, there’s Solomon in the hall,” said the Squire, “and 
playing my fav’rite tune, I believe — ‘ The flaxen-headed 
ploughboy 9 — he’s for giving us a hint as we aren’t enough in 
a hurry to hear him play. Bob,” he called out to his third 
long-legged son, who was at the other end of the room, “ open 
the door, and tell Solomon to come in. He shall give us a 
tune here.” 

Bob obeyed, and Solomon walked in, fiddling as he walked, 
for he would on no account break off in the middle of a tune. 

“Here, Solomon,” said the Squire, with loud patronage. 
“ Round here, my man. Ah, I knew it was ‘ The flaxen- 
headed ploughboy ’ : there’s no finer tune.” 

Solomon Macey, a small hale old man, with an abundant 
crop of long white hair reaching nearly to his shoulders, ad- 
vanced to the indicated spot, bowing reverently while he fid- 
dled, as much as to say that he respected the company though 
he respected the key-note more. As soon as he had repeated 
the tune and lowered his fiddle, he bowed again to the Squire 
and the Rector, and said, “ I hope I see your honor and your 
reverence well, and wishing you health and long life and a 
happy New Year. And wishing the same to you, Mr. Lam- 
meter, sir ; and to the other gentlemen, and the madams, and 
the young lasses.” 

As Solomon uttered the last words, he bowed in all direc- 
tions solicitously, lest he should be wantiug in due respect. 
But thereupon he immediately began to prelude, and fell into 
the tune which he knew would be taken as a special compli- 
ment by Mr. Lammeter. 

“ Thank ye, Solomon, thank ye, ” said Mr. Lammeter when 


106 


SILAS MARNER. 


the fiddle paused again. “ That’s ‘ Over the hills and far 
away,’ that is. My father used to say to me,- whenever we 
heard that tune, ‘ Ah, lad, I come from over the hills and far 
away.’ There’s a many tunes I don’t make head or tail of; 
but that speaks to me like the blackbird’s whistle. I suppose 
it’ s the name : there’ s a deal in the name of a tune. ” 

But Solomon was already impatient to prelude again, and 
presently broke with much spirit into “ Sir Roger de Coverley, ” 
at which there was a sound of chairs pushed back, and laugh- 
ing voices. 

“Ay, ay, Solomon, we know what that means,” said the 
Squire, rising. “It’s time to begin the dance, eh? Lead the 
way, then, and we’ll all follow you.” 

So Solomon, holding his white head on one side, and play- 
ing vigorously, marched forward at the head of the gay pro- 
cession into the White Parlor, where the mistletoe-bough was 
hung, and multitudinous tallow candles made rather a brilliant 
effect, gleaming from among the berried holly-boughs, and re- 
flected in the old-fashioned oval mirrors fastened in the panels 
of the white wainscot. A quaint procession ! Old Solomon, 
in his seedy clothes and long white locks, seemed to be luring 
that decent company by the magic scream of his fiddle — luring 
discreet matrons in turban-shaped caps, nay, Mrs. Cracken- 
thorp herself, the summit of whose perpendicular feather was 
on a level with the Squire’s shoulder — luring fair lasses com- 
placently conscious of very short waists and skirts blameless 
of front folds — luring burly fathers in large variegated waist- 
coats, and ruddy sons, for the most part shy and sheepish, 
in short nether garments and very long coat-tails. 

Already Mr. Macey and a few other privileged villagers, 
who were allowed to be spectators on these great occasions, 
were seated on benches placed for them near the door ; and 
great was the admiration and satisfaction in that quarter when 
the couples had formed themselves for the dance, and the 
Squire led off with Mrs. Crackenthorp, joining hands with the 
Rector and Mrs. Osgood. That was as it should be— that was 
what everybody had been used to — and the charter of Raveloe 
seemed to be renewed by the ceremony. It was not thought 
of as an unbecoming levity for the old and middle-aged people 


SILAS MARNER. 


107 

to dance a little before sitting down to cards, but rather as 
part of their social duties. For what were these if not to be 
merry at appropriate times, interchanging visits and poultry 
with due frequency, paying each other old-established compli- 
ments in sound traditional phrases, passing well-tried personal 
jokes, urging your guests to eat and drink too much out of 
hospitality, and eating and drinking too much in your neigh- 
bor’s house to show that you liked your cheer? And the par- 
son naturally set an example in these social duties. For it 
would not have been possible for the Raveloe mind, without a 
peculiar revelation, to know that a clergyman should be a pale- 
faced memento of solemnities, instead of a reasonably faulty 
man whose exclusive authority to read prayers and preach, to 
christen, marry, and bury you, necessarily coexisted with the 
right to sell you the ground to be buried in and to take tithe 
in kind; on which last point, of course, there was a little 
grumbling, but not to the extent of irreligion — not of deeper 
significance than the grumbling at the rain, which was by no 
means accompanied with a spirit of impious defiance, but with 
a desire that the prayer for fine weather might be read forth- 
with. 

There was no reason, then, why the Rector’s dancing should 
not be received as part of the fitness of things quite as much 
as the Squire’s, or why, on the other hand, Mr. Macey’s offi- 
cial respect should restrain him from subjecting the parson’s 
performance to that criticism with which minds of extraordi- 
nary acuteness must necessarily contemplate the doings of their 
fallible fellow-men. 

“The Squire’s pretty springe, considering his weight,” said 
Mr. Macey, “ and he stamps uncommon well. But Mr. Lam- 
meter beats ’em all for shapes : you see he holds his head like 
a sodger, and he isn’t so cushiony as most o’ the oldish gentle- 
folks — they run fat in general; and he’s got a fine leg. The 
parson’s nimble enough, but he hasn’t got much of a leg: it’s 
a bit too thick down’ard, and his knees might be a bit nearer 
wi’out damage; but he might do worse, he might do worse. 
Though he hasn’t that grand way o’ waving his hand as the 
Squire has.” 

“Talk o’ nimbleness, look at Mrs. Osgood,” said Ben Win- 


108 


SILAS MARKER. 


throp, who was holding his son Aaron between his knees. 
“ She trips along with her little steps, so as nobody can see 
how she goes — it’s like as if she had little wheels to her feet. 
She doesn’t look a day older nor last year: she’s the finest- 
made woman as is, let the next be where she will.” 

“ I don’t heed how the women are made,” said Mr. Macey, 
with some contempt. “ They wear nayther coat nor breeches : 
you can’t make much out o’ their shapes.” 

“ Fay der,” said Aaron, whose feet were busy beating out the 
tune, “ how does that big cock’s feather stick in Mrs. Crack- 
enthorp’s yead? Is there a little hole for it, like in my 
shuttle-cock? ” 

“Hush, lad, hush; that’s the way the ladies dress their- 
selves, that is,” said the father, adding, however, in an un- 
dertone to Mr. Macey, “ It does make her look funny, 
though — partly like a short-necked bottle wi’ a long quill in 
it. Hey, by jingo, there’s the young Squire leading off now, 
wi’ JVfiss Nancy for partners! There’s a lass for you! — like 
a pink-and-white posy — there’s nobody ’ud think as anybody 
could be so pritty. I shouldn’t wonder if she’s Madam Cass 
some day, arter all — and nobody more rightfuller, for they’d 
make a fine match. You , can find nothing against Master God- 
frey’s shapes, Macey, /’ll bet a penny.” 

Mr. Macey screwed up his mouth, leaned his head further 
on one side, and twirled his thumbs with a presto movement 
as his eyes followed Godfrey up the dance. At last he 
summed up his opinion. 

“Pretty well down’ard, but a bit too round i’ the shoulder- 
blades. And as for them coats as he gets from the Flitton 
tailor, they’re a poor cut to pay double money for.” 

“Ah, Mr. Macey, you and me are two folks,” said Ben, 
slightly indignant at this carping. “ When I’ve got a pot o’ 
good ale, I like to swaller it, and do my inside good, i’stead 
o’ smelling and staring at it to see if I can’t find faut wi’ the 
brewing. I should like you to pick me out a finer-limbed 
young fellow nor Master Godfrey — one as ’ud knock you down 
easier, or ’s more pleasanter looksed when he’s piert and 
merry.” 

“ Tchuh ! ” said Mr. Macey, provoked to increased severity, 


SILAS MARKER. 


109 


“he isn’t come to his right color yet: he’s partly like a slack- 
baked pie. And I doubt he’s got a soft place in his head, 
else why should he be turned round the finger by that offal 
Dunsey as nobody’s seen o’ late, and let him kill that fine 
hunting hoss as was the talk o’ the country? And one while 
he was allays after Miss Nancy, and then it all went off again, 
like a smell o’ hot porridge, as I may say. That wasn’t my 
way when I went a-coorting.” 

“Ah, but mayhap Miss Nancy hung off like, and your lass 
didn’t,” said Ben. 

“I should say she didn’t,” said Mr. Macey, significantly. 
“Before I said ‘ sniff,’ I took care to know as she’d say 
‘ snaff,’ and pretty quick, too. I wasn’t a-going to open my 
mouth, like a dog at a fly, and snap it to again, wi’ nothing to 
swaller.” 

“Well, I think Miss Nancy’s a-coming round again,” said 
Ben, “for Master Godfrey doesn’t look so down-hearted to- 
night. And I see he’s for taking her away to sit down, now 
they’re at the end o’ the dance : that looks like sweetheaf ting, 
that does.” 

The reason why Godfrey and Nancy had left the dance was 
not so tender as Ben imagined. In the close press of couples 
a slight accident had happened to Nancy’s dress, which, while 
it was short enough to show her neat ankle in front, vas long 
enough behind to be caught under the stately stamp of the 
Squire’s foot, so as to rend certain stitches at the waist, and 
cause much sisterly agitation in Priscilla’s mind, as well as 
serious concern in Nancy’s. One’s thoughts may be much 
occupied with love-struggles, but hardly so as to be insensible 
to a disorder in the general framework of things. Nancy had 
no sooner completed her duty in the figure they were dancing 
than she said to Godfrey, with a deep blush, that she must go 
and sit down till Priscilla could come to her ; for the sisters 
had already exchanged a short whisper and an open-eyed 
glance full of meaning. No reason less urgent than this could 
have prevailed on Nancy to give Godfrey this opportunity of 
sitting apart with her. As for Godfrey, he was feeling so 
happy and oblivious under the long charm of the country - 
dance with Nancy that he got rather bold on the strength of 


110 


SILAS MARKER. 


her confusion, and was capable of leading her straight away, 
without leave asked, into the adjoining small parlor, where 
the card-tables were set. 

“ Oh, no, thank you,” said Nancy, coldly, as soon as she per- 
ceived where he was going, “ not in there. I’ll wait here till 
Priscilla’s ready to come to me. I’m sorry to bring you out 
of the dance and make myself troublesome.” 

“Why, you’ll be more comfortable here by yourself,” said 
the artful Godfrey : “ I’ll leave you here till your sister can 
come.” He spoke in an indifferent tone. 

That was an agreeable proposition, and just what Nancy 
desired; why, then, was she a little hurt that Mr. Godfrey 
should make it? They entered, and she seated herself on a 
chair against one of the card-tables, as the stiffest and most 
unapproachable position she could choose. 

“Thank you, sir,” she said immediately. “I needn’t give 
you any more trouble. I’m sorry you’ve had such an unlucky 
partner. ” 

“That’s very ill-natured of you,” said Godfrey, standing 
by her without any sign of intended departure, “ to be sorry 
you’ve danced with me.” 

“Oh, no, sir, I don’t mean to say what’s ill-natured at all,” 
said Nancy, looking distractingly prim and pretty. “ When 
gentlemen have so many pleasures, one dance can matter but 
very little.” 

“ You know that isn’t true. You know one dance with you 
matters more to me than all the other pleasures in the world.” 

It was a long, long while since Godfrey had said anything 
so direct as that, and Nancy was startled. But her instinctive 
dignity and repugnance to any show of emotion made her sit 
perfectly still, and only throw a little more decision into her 
voice, as she said, — 

“No, indeed, Mr. Godfrey, that’s not known to me, and 1 
have very good reasons for thinking different. But if it’s 
true, I don’t wish to hear it.” 

“ Would you never forgive me, then, Nancy — never think 
well of me, let what would happen — would you never think 
the present made amends for the past? Not if I turned a 
good fellow, and gave up everything you didn’t like? ” 


SILAS MARNER. 


Ill 


Godfrey was half conscious that this sudden opportunity of 
speaking to Nancy alone had driven him beside himself; but 
blind feeling had got the mastery of his tongue. Nancy really 
felt much agitated by the possibility Godfrey’s words sug- 
gested, but this very pressure of emotion that she was in dan- 
ger of finding too strong for her roused all her power of self- 
command. 

“ I should be glad to see a good change in anybody, Mr. 
Godfrey,” she answered, with the slightest discernible differ- 
ence of tone, “but it ’ud be better if no change was wanted.” 

“ You’re very hard-hearted, Nancy,” said Godfrey, pettishly. 
“ You might encourage me to be a better fellow. I’m very 
miserable — but you’ve no feeling.” 

“ I think those have the least feeling that act wrong to be- 
gin with,” said Nancy, sending out a flash in spite of herself. 
Godfrey was delighted with that little flash, and would have 
liked to go on and make her quarrel with him; Nancy was so 
exasperatingly quiet and firm. But she was not indifferent to 
him yet. 

The entrance of Priscilla, bustling forward and saying, 
“Dear heart alive, child, let us look at this gown,” cut off 
Godfrey’s hopes of a quarrel. 

“ I suppose I must go now, ” he said to Priscilla. 

“It’s no matter to me whether you go or stay,” said that 
frank lady, searching for something in her pocket, with a pre- 
occupied brow. 

“Do you want me to go?” said Godfrey, looking at Nancy, 
who was now standing up by Priscilla’s order. 

“ As you like,” said Nancy, trying to recover all her former 
coldness, and looking down carefully at the hem of her gown. 

“ Then I like to stay, ” said Godfrey, with a reckless deter- 
mination to get as much of this joy as he could to-night, and 
think nothing of the morrow. 


112 


SILAS MARNER. 


CHAPTER XII. 

While Godfrey Cass was taking draughts of forgetfulness 
from the sweet presence of Nancy, willingly losing all sense of 
that hidden bond which at other moments galled and fretted 
him so as to mingle irritation with the very sunshine, God- 
frey’s wife was walking with slow uncertain steps through the 
snow-covered Raveloe lanes, carrying her child in her arms. 

This journey on New Year’s Eve was a premeditated act of 
vengeance which she had kept in her heart ever since Godfrey, 
in a fit of passion, had told her he would sooner die than 
acknowledge her as his wife. There would be a great party at 
the Red House on New Year’s Eve, she knew: her husband 
would be smiling and smiled upon, hiding her existence in the 
darkest corner of his heart. But she would mar his pleasure : 
she would go in her dingy rags, with her faded face, once as 
handsome as the best, with her little child that had its father’s 
hair and eyes, and disclose herself to the Squire as his eldest 
son’ s wife. It is seldom that the miserable can help regarding 
their misery as a wrong inflicted by those who are less miser- 
able. Molly knew that the cause of her dingy rags was not 
her husband’s neglect, but the demon Opium, to whom she was 
enslaved, body and soul, except in the lingering mother’s ten- 
derness that refused to give him her hungry child. She knew 
this well ; and yet, in the moments of wretched unbenumbed 
consciousness, the sense ol her want and degradation trans- 
formed itself continually into bitterness toward Godfrey. He 
was well off ; and if she had her rights she would be well off 
too. The belief that he repented his marriage, and suffered 
from it, only aggravated her vindictiveness. Just and self- 
reproving thoughts do not come to us too thickly, even in the 
purest air and with the best lessons of heaven and earth ; how 
should those white-winged delicate messengers make their way 
to Molly’s poisoned chamber, inhabited by no higher memories 
than those of a barmaid’ s paradise of pink ribbons and gentle- 
men ’s jokes? 

She had set out at an early hour, but had lingered on the 


SILAS MARKER. 


113 


road, inclined by her indolence to believe that if she waited 
under a warm shed the snow would cease to fall. She had 
waited longer than she knew, and now that she found herself 
belated in the snow-hidden ruggedness of the long lanes, even 
the animation of a vindictive purpose could not keep her spirit 
from failing. It was seven o’clock, and by this time she was 
not very far from Raveloe, but she was not familiar enough 
with those monotonous lanes to know how near she was to her 
journey’s end. She needed comfort, and she knew but one 
comforter — the familiar demon in her bosom ; but she hesitated 
a moment, after drawing out the black remnant, before she 
raised it to her lips. In that moment the mother’s love 
pleaded for painful consciousness rather than oblivion — 
pleaded to be left in aching weariness, rather than to have the 
encircling arms benumbed so that they could not feel the dear 
burden. In another moment Molly had flung something away, 
but it was not the black remnant — it was an empty phial. 
And she walked on again under the breaking cloud, from 
which there came now and then the light of a quickly veiled 
star, for a freezing wind had sprung up since the snowing had 
ceased. But she walked always more and more drowsily, and 
clutched more and more automatically the sleeping child at her 
bosom. 

Slowly the demon was working his will, and cold and weari- 
ness were his helpers. Soon she felt nothing but a supreme 
immediate longing that curtained off all futurity — the longing 
to lie down and sleep. She had arrived at a spot where her 
footsteps were no longer checked by a hedgerow, and she had 
wandered vaguely, unable to distinguish any objects, notwith- 
standing the wide whiteness around her, and the growing star- 
light. She sank down against a straggling furze^bush, an 
easy pillow enough; and the bed of snow, too, was soft. She 
did not feel that the bed was cold, and did not heed whether 
the child would wake and cry for her. But her arms had not 
yet relaxed their instinctive clutch; and the little one slum- 
bered on as gently as if it had been rocked in a lace-trimmed 
cradle. 

But the complete torpor came at last : the fingers lost their 
tension, the arms unbent; then the little head fell away from 
8 


114 


SILAS MARNER 


the bosom, and the blue eyes opened wide on the cold starlight. 
At lirst there was a little peevish cry of “ mammy, ” and an 
effort to regain the pillowing arm and bosom; but mammy’s 
ear was deaf, and the pillow seemed to be slipping away back- 
ward. Suddenly, as the child rolled downward on its mother’s 
knees, all wet with snow, its eyes were caught by a bright 
glancing light on the white ground, and, with the ready trans- 
ition of infancy, it was immediately absorbed in watching the 
bright living thing running toward it, yet never arriving. 
That bright living thing must be caught; and in an instant 
the child had slipped on all fours, and held out one little hand 
to catch the gleam. But the gleam would not be caught in 
that way, and now the head was held up to see where the cun- 
ning gleam came from. It came from a very bright place; 
and the little one, rising on its legs, toddled through the snow, 
the old grimy shawl in which it was wrapped trailing behind 
it, and the queer little bonnet dangling at its back — toddled 
on to the open door of Silas Marner’ s cottage, and right up to 
the warm hearth, where there was a bright fire of logs and 
sticks, which had thoroughly warmed the old sack (Silas’s 
greatcoat) spread out on the bricks to dry. The little one, 
accustomed to be left to itself for long hours without notice 
from its mother, squatted down on the sack, and spread its 
tiny hands toward the blaze, in perfect contentment, gurgling 
and making many inarticulate communications to the cheerful 
fire, like a new-hatched gosling beginning to find itself com- 
fortable. But presently the warmth had a lulling effect, and 
the little golden head sank down on the old sack, and the blue 
eyes were veiled by their delicate half -transparent lids. 

But where was Silas Marner while this strange visitor had 
come to his hearth? He was in the cottage, but he did not 
see the child. During the last few weeks, since he had lost his 
money, he had contracted the habit of opening his door and 
looking out from time to time, as if he thought that his money 
might be somehow coming back to him, or that some trace, 
some news of it, might be mysteriously on the road, and be 
caught by the listening ear or the straining eye. It was 
chiefly at night, when he was not occupied in his loom, that 
he fell into this repetition of an act for which he could have 


SILAS MARKER. 


115 


assigned no definite purpose, and which can hardly be under- 
stood except by those who have undergone a bewildering sepa- 
ration from a supremely loved object. In the evening twi- 
light, and later whenever the night was not dark, Silas looked 
out on that narrow prospect round the Stone-pits, listening and 
gazing, not with hope, but with mere yearning and unrest. 

This morning he had been told by some of his neighbors 
that it was New Year’s Eve, and that he must sit up and hear 
the old year rung out and the new rung in, because thac was 
good luck, and might bring his money back again. This was 
only a friendly Raveloe way of jesting with the half -crazy 
oddities of a miser, but it had perhaps helped to throw Silas 
into a more than usually excited state. Since the oncoming 
of twilight he had opened his door again and again, though 
only to shut it immediately at seeing all distance veiled by the 
falling snow. But the last time he opened it the snow had 
ceased, and the clouds were parting here and there. He stood 
and listened, and gazed for a long while — there was really 
something on the road coming toward him then, but he caught 
no sign of it ; and the stillness and the wide trackless snow 
seemed to narrow his solitude, and touched his yearning "Cvith 
the chill of despair. He went in again, and put his right 
hand on the latch of the door to close it — but he did not close 
it : he was arrested, as he had been already since his loss, by 
the invisible wand of catalepsy, and stood like a graven image, 
with wide but sightless eyes, holding open his door, powerless 
to resist either the good or evil that might enter there. 

When Marner s sensibility returned, he continued the action 
which had been arrested, and closed his door, unaware of the 
chasm in his consciousness, unaware of any intermediate 
change, except that the light had grown dim, and that he was 
chilled and faint. He thought he had been too long standing 
at the dooi and looking out. Turning toward the hearth, 
where the two logs had fallen apart, and sent forth only a red 
uncertain glimmer, he seated himself on his fireside chair, and 
was stooping to push his logs together, when, to his blurred 
vision, it seemed as if there were gold on 1 he floor in front of 
the hearth. Gold! — his own gold— brought back to him as 
mysteriously as it had been taken away! He felt his heart 


116 


SILAS MARNER. 


begin to beat violently, and for a few moments he was unable 
to stretch out his hand and grasp the restored treasure. The 
heap of gold seemed to glow and get larger beneath his agitated 
gaze. He leaned forward at last, and stretched forth his 
hand ; but instead of the hard coin with the familiar resisting 
outline, his fingers encountered soft warm curls. In utter 
amazement, Silas fell on his knees and bent his head low to 
examine the marvel : it was a sleeping child — a round, fair 
thing, with soft yellow rings all over its head. Could this be 
his little sister come back to him in a dream — his little sister 
whom he had carried about in his arms for a year before she 
died, when he was a small boy without shoes or stockings? 
That was the first thought that darted across Silas’s blank 
wonderment. Was it a dream? He rose to his feet again, 
pushed his logs together, and, throwing on some dried leaves 
and sticks, raised a flame ; but the flame did not disperse the 
vision — it only lit up more distinctly the little round form of 
the child, and its shabby clothing. It was very much like his 
little sister. Silas sank into his chair powerless, under the 
double presence of an inexplicable surprise and a hurrying in- 
flux of memories. How and when had the child come in with- 
out his knowledge? He had never been beyond the door. 
But along with that question, and almost thrusting it away, 
there was a vision of the old home and the old streets leading 
to Lantern Yard — and within that vision another, of the 
thoughts which had been present with him in those far-off 
scenes. The thoughts were strange to him now, like old 
friendships impossible to revive; and yet he had a dreamy 
feeling that this child was somehow a message come to him 
from that far-off life : it stirred fibres that had never been 
moved in Raveloe — old quiverings of tenderness — old impres- 
sions of awe at the presentiment of some Power presiding over 
his life; for his imagination had not yet extricated itself from 
the sense of mystery in the child’s sudden presence, and had 
formed no conjectures of ordinary natural means by which the 
event could have been brought about. 

But there was a cry on the hearth : the child had awaked, 
and Marner stooped to lift it on his knee. It clung round his 
neck, and burst louder and louder into that mingling of inar- 


SILAS MARNER. 


117 


ticulate cries with “ mammy ” by which little children express 
the bewilderment of waking. Silas pressed it to him, and 
almost unconsciously uttered sounds of hushing tenderness, 
while he bethought himself that some of his porridge, which 
had got cool by the dying fire, would do to feed the child with 
if it were only warmed up a little. 

He had plenty to do through the next hour. The porridge, 
sweetened with some dry brown sugar from an old store which 
he had refrained from using for himself, stopped the cries of 
the little one, and made her lift her blue eyes with a wide 
quiet gaze at Silas, as he put the spoon into her mouth. Pres- 
ently she slipped from his knee and began to toddle about, 
but with a pretty stagger that made Silas jump up and follow 
her lest she should fall against anything that would hurt her. 
But she only fell in a sitting posture on the ground, and began 
to pull at her boots, looking up at him with a crying face as 
if the boots hurt her. He took her on his knee again, but it 
was some time before it occurred to Silas’s dull bachelor mind 
that the wet boots were the grievance, pressing on her warm 
ankles. He got them off with difficulty, and baby was at once 
happily occupied with the primary mystery of her own tofes, 
inviting Silas, with much chuckling, to consider the mystery 
too. But the wet boots had at last suggested to Silas that the 
child had been walking on the snow, and this roused him from 
his entire oblivion of any ordinary means by which it could 
have entered or been brought into his house. Unde^ the 
prompting of this new idea, and without waiting to form con- 
jectures, he raised the child in his arms, and went to the door. 
As soon as he had opened it, there was the cry of “ mammy ” 
again, which Silas had not heard since the child’s first hungry 
waking. Bending forward, he could just discern the marks 
made by the little feet on the virgin snow, and he followed 
their track to the furze bushes. “ Mammy ! ” the little one 
cried again and again, stretching itself forward so as almost to 
escape from Silas’s arm, before he himself was aware that 
there was something more than the bush before him — that 
there was a human body, with the head sunk low in the furze, 
and half-covered with the shaken snow. 


118 


SILAS MARKER. 


CHAPTER XIII. 

It was after the early supper-time at the Red House, and 
the entertainment was in that stage when bashfulness itself 
had passed into easy jollity, when gentlemen, conscious of 
unusual accomplishments, could at length be prevailed on to 
dance a hornpipe, and when the Squire preferred talking loud- 
ly, scattering snuff, and patting his visitors’ backs, to sitting 
longer at the whist-table — a choice exasperating to uncle Kim- 
ble, who, being always volatile in sober business hours, became 
intense and bitter over cards and brandy, shuffled before his 
adversary’s deal with a glare of suspicion, and turned up a 
mean trump-card with an air of inexpressible disgust, as if in 
a world where such things could happen one might as well 
enter on a course of reckless profligacy. When the evening 
had advanced to this pitch of freedom and enjoyment, it was 
usual for the servants, the heavy duties of supper being well 
over, to get their share of amusement by coming to look on at 
the dancing ; so that the back regions of the house were left 
in solitude. 

There were two doors by which the White Parlor was en- 
tered from the hall, and they were both standing open for the 
sake of air; but the lower one was crowded with the servants 
and villagers, and only the upper doorway was left free. Bob 
Cass was figuring in a hornpipe, and his father, very proud of 
this lithe son, whom he repeatedly declared to be just like 
himself in his young days in a tone that implied this to be the 
very highest stamp of juvenile merit, was the centre of a group 
who had placed themselves opposite the performer, not far 
from the upper door. Godfrey was standing a little way off, 
not to admire his brother’s dancing, but to keep sight of Nancy, 
who was seated in the group, near her father. He stood 
aloof, because he wished to avoid suggesting himself as a sub- 
ject for the Squire’s fatherly jokes in connection with matri- 
mony and Miss Nancy Lammeter’s beauty, which were likely 
to become more and more explicit. But he had the prospect 
of dancing with her again when the hornpipe was concluded, 


SILAS MARNER. 


119 


and in the mean while it was very pleasant to get long glances 
at her quite unobserved. 

But when Godfrey was lifting his eyes from one of those 
long glances, they encountered an object as startling to him at 
that moment as if it had been an apparition from the dead. 
It was an apparition from that hidden life which lies, like a 
dark by-street, behind the goodly ornamented facade that 
meets the sunlight and the gaze of respectable admirers. It 
was his own child carried in Silas Marner’s arms. That was 
his instantaneous impression, unaccompanied by doubt, though 
he had not seen the child for months past ; and when the hope 
was rising that he might possibly be mistaken, Mr. Cracken- 
thorp and Mr. Lammeter had already advanced to Silas, in 
astonishment at this strange advent. Godfrey joined them 
immediately, unable to rest without hearing every word — 
trying to control himself, but conscious that if any one 
noticed him, they must see that he was white-lipped and 
trembling. 

But now all eyes at that end of the room were bent on Silas 
Marner; the Squire himself had risen, and asked angrily, 
“ How’s this? — what’s this? — what do you do coming in here 
in this way? ” 

“I’m come for the doctor — I want the doctor,” Silas had 
said, in the first moment, to Mr. Crackenthorp. 

“ Why, what’ s the matter, Marner? ” said the rector. “ The 
doctor’s here; but say quietly what you want him for.” 

“ It’s a woman,” said Silas, speaking low, and half-breath- 
lessly, just as Godfrey came up. “ She’s dead, I think — dead 
in the snow at the Stone-pits — not far from my door. ” 

Godfrey felt a great throb : there was one terror in his mind 
at that moment : it was, that the woman might not be dead. 
That was an evil terror — an ugly inmate to have found a nest- 
ling-place in Godfrey’s kindly disposition ; but no disposition 
is a security from evil wishes to a man whose happiness hangs 
on duplicity. 

“ Hush, hush ! ” said Mr. Crackenthorp. “ Go out into the 
hall there. I’ll fetch thd doctor to you. Found a woman in 
the snow — and thinks she’s dead,” he added, speaking low, to 
the Squire. “ Better say as little about it as possible : it will 


120 


SILAS MARNER. 


shock the ladies. Just tell them a poor woman is ill from 
cold and hunger. I’ll go and fetch Kimble.” 

By this time, however, the ladies had pressed forward, 
curious to know what could have brought the solitary linen- 
weaver there under such strange circumstances, and interested 
in the pretty child, who, half alarmed and half attracted by 
the brightness and the numerous company, now frowned and 
hid her face, now lifted up her head again and looked round 
placably, until a touch or a coaxing word brought back the 
frown, and made her bury her face with new determination. 

“ What child is it? ” said several ladies at once, and, among 
the rest, Nancy Lammeter, addressing Godfrey. 

“ I don’t know — some poor woman’s who has been found in 
the snow, I believe,” was the answer Godfrey wrung from 
himself with a terrible effort. (“ After all, am I certain? ” 
he hastened to add, in anticipation of his own conscience.) 

“ Why, you’d better leave the child here, then, Master 
Marner,” said good-natured Mrs. Kimble, hesitating, how- 
ever, to take those dingy clothes into contact with her own 
ornamented satin bodice. “ I’ll tell one of the girls to fetch 
it.” 

“ No — no — I can’t part with it, I can’t let it go,” said Silas, 
abruptly. “It’s come to me — I’ve a right to keep it.” 

The proposition to take the child from him had come to 
Silas quite unexpectedly, and his speech, uttered under a 
strong sudden impulse, was almost like a revelation to him- 
self : a minute before, he had no distinct intention about the 
child. 

“Did you ever hear the like?” said Mrs. Kimble, in mild 
surprise, to her neighbor. 

“Now, ladies, I must trouble you to stand aside,” said Mr. 
Kimble, coming from the card-room, in some bitterness at the 
interruption, but drilled by the long habit of his profession 
into obedience to unpleasant calls, even when he was hardly 
sober. 

“It’s a nasty business turning out now, eh, Kimble?” said 
the Squire. “ He might ha’ gone for your young fellow — the 
’prentice, there — what’s his name?” ^ 

“Might? ay — what’s the use of talking about might?” 


SILAS MARKER. 


121 


growled uncle Kimble, hastening out with Marner, and fol- 
lowed by Mr. Crackenthorp and Godfrey. “ Get me a pair of 
thick boots, Godfrey, will you? And stay, let somebody run 
to Win thro p’s and fetch Dolly — she’s the best woman to get. 
Ben was here himself before supper; is he gone?” 

“Yes, sir, I met him,” said Marner; “but I couldn’t stop 
to tell him anything, only I said I was going for the doctor, 
and he said the doctor was at the Squire’ s. And I made haste 
and ran, and there was nobody to be seen at the back o’ the 
house, and so I went in to where the company was.” 

The child, no longer distracted by the bright light and the 
smiling women’s faces, began to cry and call for “mammy,” 
though always clinging to Marner, who had apparently won 
her thorough confidence. Godfrey had come back with the 
boots, and felt the cry as if some fibre were drawn tight with- 
in him. 

“I’ll go,” he said hastily, eager for some movement; “I’ll 
go and fetch the woman— Mrs. Winthrop.” 

“0, pooh — send somebody else,” said uncle Kimble, hurry- 
ing away with Marner. 

“You’ll let me know if I can be of any use, Kimble,” said 
Mr. Crackenthorp. But the doctor was out of hearing. 

Godfrey, too, had disappeared: he was gone to snatch his 
hat and coat, having just reflection enough to remember that 
he must not look like a madman ; but he rushed out of the 
house into the snow without heeding his thin shoes. 

In a few minutes he was on his rapid way to the Stone-pits 
by the side of Dolly, who, though feeling that she was entirely 
in her place in encountering cold and snow on an errand of 
mercy, was much concerned at a young gentleman’s getting 
his feet wet under a like impulse. 

“You’d a deal better go back, sir,” said Dolly, with re- 
spectful compassion. “You’ve no call to catch cold; and I’d 
ask you if you’d be so good as tell my husband to come, on 
your way back — he’s at the Bainbow, I doubt — if you found 
him anywhere sober enough to be o’ use. Or else, there’s 
Mrs. Snell ’ud happen send the boy up to fetch and carry, for 
there may be things wanted from the doctor’s.” 

“No, I’ll stay, now I’m once out — I’ll stay outside here,” 


122 


SILAS MARKER. 


said Godfrey, when they came opposite Marner’s cottage. 
“ You can come and tell me if I can do anything.” 

“Well, sir, you’re very good: you’ve a tender heart,” said 
Dolly, going to the door. 

Godfrey was too painfully preoccupied to feel a twinge of 
self-reproach at this undeserved praise. He walked up and 
down, unconscious that he was plunging ankle-deep in snow, 
unconscious of everything but trembling suspense about what 
was going on in the cottage, and the effect of each alternative 
on his future lot. No, not quite unconscious of everything 
else. Deeper down, and half-smothered by passionate desire 
and dread, tfyere was the sense that he ought not to be wait- 
ing on these alternatives ; that he ought to accept the conse- 
quences of his deeds, own the miserable wife, and fulfil the 
claims of the helpless child. But he had not moral courage 
enough to contemplate that active renunciation of Nancy as 
possible for him : he had only conscience and heart enough to 
make him forever uneasy under the weakness that forbade the 
renunciation. And at this moment his mind leaped away from 
all restraint toward the sudden prospect of deliverance from 
his long bondage. 

“ Is she dead? ” said the voice that predominated over every 
other within him. “If she is, I may marry Nancy; and then 
I shall be a good fellow in future, and have no secrets, and 
the child — shall be taken care of somehow.” But across that 
vision came the other possibility — “ She may live, and then 
it’s all up with me.” 

Godfrey never knew how long it was before the door of the 
cottage opened and Mr. Kimble came out. He went forward 
to meet his uncle, prepared to suppress the agitation he must 
feel, whatever news he was to hear. 

“I waited for you, as I’d come so far,” he said, speaking 
first. 

“Pooh, it was nonsense for you to come out: why didn’t 
you send one of the men? There’s nothing to be done. She’s 
dead — has been dead for hours, I should say.” 

“What sort of woman is she?” said Godfrey, feeling the 
blood rush to his face. 

“A young woman, but emaciated, with long black hair. 


SILAS MARKER. 


123 


Some vagrant — quite in rags. She’s got a wedding-ring on, 
however. They must fetch her away to the workhouse to- 
morrow. Come, come along.” 

“ I want to look at her,” said Godfrey. “I think I saw 
such a woman yesterday. I’ll overtake you in a minute or 
two. ” 

Mr. Kimble went on, and Godfrey turned back to the cot- 
tage. He cast only one glance at the dead face on the pillow, 
which Dolly had smoothed with decent care ; but he remem- 
bered that last look at his unhappy hated wife so well, that at 
the end of sixteen years every line in the worn face was pres- 
ent to him when he told the full story of this night. 

He turned immediately toward the hearth, where Silas Mar- 
ner sat lulling the child. She was perfectly quiet now, but 
not asleep — only soothed by sweet porridge and warmth into 
that wide -gazing calm which makes us older human beings, 
with our inward turmoil, feel a certain awe in the presence of 
a little child, such as we feel before some quiet majesty or 
beauty in the earth or sky — before a steady glowing planet, or 
a full-flowered eglantine, or the bending trees over a silent 
pathway. The wide-open blue eyes looked up at Godfrey’s 
without any uneasiness or sign of recognition : the child could 
make no visible audible claim on its father; and the father 
felt a strange mixture of feelings, a conflict of regret and joy, 
that the pulse of that little heart had no response for the half- 
jealous yearning in his own, when the blue eyes turned away 
from him slowly, and fixed themselves on the weaver’s queer 
face, which was bent low down to look at them, while the 
small hand begun to pull Marner’s withered cheek with loving 
disfiguration. 

“You’ll take the child to the parish to-morrow?” asked 
Godfrey, speaking as indifferently as he could. 

“ Who says so? ” said Marner, sharply. “ Will they make 
me take her? ” 

“ Why, you wouldn’t like to keep her, should you — an old 
bachelor like you? ” 

“ Till anybody shows they’ ve a right to take her away from 
me,” said Marner. “The mother’s dead, and I reckon it’s 
got no father: it’s a lone thing — and I’m a lone thing. My 


124 


SILAS MARNER. 


money’s gone, I don’t know where — and this is come from I 
don’t know where. I know nothing — I’m partly mazed.” 

“ Poor little thing ! ” said Godfrey. “ Let me give some- 
thing toward finding it clothes.” 

He had put his hand in his pocket and found half a guinea, 
and, thrusting it into Silas’s hand, he harried out of the cot- 
tage to overtake Mr. Kimble. 

“Ah, I see it’s not the same woman I saw,” he said, as he 
came up. “It’s a pretty little child: the old fellow seems to 
want to keep it; that’s strange for a miser like him. But I 
gave him a trifle to help him out: the parish isn’t likely to 
quarrel with him for the right to keep the child.” 

“No; but I’ve seen the time when I might have quarrelled 
with him for it myself. It’s too late now, though. If the 
child ran into the fire, your aunt’s too fat to overtake it: she 
could only sit and grunt like an alarmed sow. But what a 
fool you are, Godfrey, to come out in your dancing shoes and 
stockings in this way — and you one of the beaux of the even- 
ing, and at your own house! What do you mean by such 
freaks, young fellow? Has Miss Nancy been cruel, and do 
you want to spite her by spoiling your pumps?” 

“0, everything has been disagreeable to-night. I was 
tired to death of jigging and gallanting, and that bother about 
the hornpipes. And I’d got to dance with the other Miss 
Gunn,” said Godfrey, glad of the subterfuge his uncle had 
suggested to him. 

The prevarication and white lies which a mind that keeps 
itself ambitiously pure is as uneasy under as a great artist 
under the false touches that no eye detects but his own, are 
worn as lightly as mere trimmings when once the actions have 
become a lie. 

Godfrey reappeared in the White Parlor with dry feet, and, 
since the truth must be told, with a sense of relief and glad- 
ness that was too strong for painful thoughts to struggle with. 
For could he not venture now, whenever opportunity offered, 
to say the tenderest things to Nancy Lammeter — to promise 
her and himself that he would always be just what she would 
desire to see him? There was no danger that his dead wife 
would be recognized: those were not days of active inquiry 


SILAS MARKER. 


125 


and wide report; and as for the registry of their marriage, 
that was a long way off, buried in unturned pages, away from 
every one’s interest but his own. Dunsey might betray him 
if he came back; but Dunsey might be won to silence. 

And when events turn out so much better for a man than he 
has had reason to dread, is it not a proof that his conduct has 
been less foolish and blameworthy than it might otherwise 
have appeared? When we are treated well, we naturally be- 
gin to think that we are not altogether unmeritorious, and 
that it is only just we should treat ourselves well, and not 
mar our own good fortune. Where, after all, would be the 
use of his confessing the past to Nancy Lammeter, and throw- 
ing away his happiness? — nay, hers? for he felt some confi- 
dence that she loved him. As for the child, he would see that 
it was cared for: he would never forsake it; he would do 
everything but own it. Perhaps it would be just as happy in 
life without being owned by its father, seeing that nobody 
could tell how things would turn out, and that — is there any 
other reason wanted? — well, then, that the father would be 
much happier without owning the child. 


CHAPTER XIV. 

There was a pauper’s burial that week in Raveloe, and up 
Kench Yard at Batherley it was known that the dark-haired 
woman with the fair child, who had lately come to lodge 
there, was gone away again. That was all the express note 
taken that Molly had disappeared from the eyes of men. But 
the unwept death which, to the general lot, seemed as trivial 
as the summer-shed leaf, was charged with the force of des- 
tiny to certain human lives that we know of, shaping their 
joys and sorrows even to the end. 

Silas Marner’s determination to keep the “tramp’s child” 
was matter of hardly less surprise and iterated talk in the 
village than the robbery of his money. That softening of 
feeling toward him which dated from his misfortune, that 
merging of suspicion and dislike in a rather contemptuous 


126 


SILAS MARKER. 


pity for him as lone and crazy, was now accompanied with a 
more active sympathy, especially amongst the women. Nota- 
ble mothers, who knew what it was to keep children “ whole 
and sweet ” ; lazy mothers, who knew what it was to be inter- 
rupted in folding their arms and scratching their elbows by 
the mischievous propensities of children just firm on their 
legs, were equally interested in conjecturing how a lone man 
would manage with a two-year-old child on his hands, and 
were equally ready with their suggestions : the notable chiefly 
telling him what he had better do, and the lazy ones being 
emphatic in telling him what he would never be able to do. 

Among the notable mothers, Dolly Winthrop was the one 
whose neighborly offices were the most acceptable to Marner, 
for they were rendered without any show of bustling instruc- 
tion. Silas had shown her the half-guinea given to him by 
Godfrey, and had asked her what he should do about getting 
some clothes for the child. 

“Eh, Master Marner,” said Dolly, “there’s no call to buy, 
no more nor a pair o’ shoes; for I’ve got the little petticoats 
as Aaron wore five years ago, and it’s ill spending the money 
on them baby-clothes, for the child ’ull grow like grass i’ May, 
bless it — that it will.” 

And the same day Dolly brought her bundle, and displayed 
to Marner, one by one, the tiny garments in their due order of 
succession, most of them patched and darned, but clean and 
neat as fresh-sprung herbs. This was the introduction to a 
great ceremony with soap and water, from which baby came 
out in new beauty, and sat on Dolly’s knee, handling her toes 
and chuckling and patting her palms together with an air of 
having made several discoveries about herself, which she com- 
municated by alternate sounds of “ gug-gug-gug, ” and “mam- 
my.” The “ mammy ” was not a cry of need or uneasiness. 
Baby had been used to utter it without expecting either tender 
sound or touch to follow. 

“ Anybody ’ud think the angils in heaven couldn’t be pret- 
tier,” said Dolly, rubbing the golden curls and kissing them. 
“ And to think of its being covered wi’ them dirty rags —and 
the poor mother— froze to death; but there’s Them as took 
care of it, and brought it to your door, Master Marner. The 


SILAS MARNER. 


127 


door was open, and it walked in over the snow, like as if it 
had been a little starved robin. Didn’t you say the door was 
open? ” 

“Yes,” said Silas, meditatively. “Yes — the door was 
open. The money’s gone I don’t know where, and this is 
come from I don’t know where.” 

He had not mentioned to any one his unconsciousness of 
the child’s entrance, shrinking from questions which might 
lead to the fact he himself suspected — namely, that he had 
been in one of his trances. 

“Ah,” said Dolly, with soothing gravity, “ it’s like the night 
and the morning, and the sleeping and the waking, and the 
rain and the harvest — one goes and the other comes, and we 
know nothing how nor where. We may strive and scrat and 
fend, but it’s little we can do arter all — the big things come 
and go wi’ no striving o’ our’n — they do, that they do; and I 
think you’re in the right on it to keep the little un, Master 
Marner, seeing as it’s been sent to you, though there’s folks 
as thinks different. You’ll happen be a bit moithered with it 
while it’s so little; but I’ll come, and welcome, and see to it 
for you: I’ve a bit o’ time to spare most days, for when one 
gets up betimes i’ the morning, the clock seems to stan’ still 
tow’rt ten, afore it’s time to go about the victual. So, as I 
say, I’ll come and see to the child for you, and welcome.” 

“ Thank you . . . kindly, ” said Silas, hesitating a little. 
“I’ll be glad if you’ll tell me things. But,” he added, un- 
easily, leaning forward to look .at Baby with some jealousy, 
as she was resting her head backward against Dolly’s arm, 
and eying him contentedly from a distance — “ But I want to 
do things for it myself, else it may get fond o’ somebody else, 
and not fond o’ me. I’ve been used to fending for myself in 
the house — I can learn, I can learn.” 

“Eh, to be sure,” said Dolly, gently. “I’ve seen men as 
are wonderful handy wi’ children. The men are awk’ard and 
contrairy mostly, God help ’em — but when the drink’s out of 
’em, they aren’t unsensible, though they’re bad for leeching 
and bandaging — so fiery and unpatient. You see this goes 
first, next the skin,” proceeded Dolly, taking up the little 
shirt, and putting it on. 


128 


SILAS MARNER. 


“Yes,” said Marner, docilely, bringing his eyes very close, 
that they might be initiated in the mysteries; whereupon 
Baby seized his head with both her small arms, and put her 
lips against his face with purring noises. 

“ See there,” said Dolly, with a woman’s tender tact, “ she’s 
fondest o’ you. She wants to go o’ your lap, I’ll be bound. 
Go, then : take her, Master Marner ; you can put the things 
on, and then you can say as you’ve done for her from the first 
of her coming to you.” 

Marner took her on his lap, trembling with an emotion mys- 
terious to himself, at something unknown dawning on his life. 
Thought and feeling were so confused within him, that if he 
had tried to give them utterance, he could only have said that 
the child was come instead of the gold — that the gold had 
turned into the child. He took the garments from Dolly, and 
put them on under her teaching ; interrupted, of course, by 
Baby’s gymnastics. 

“ There, then ! why, you take to it quite easy, Master Mar- 
ner,” said Dolly; “ but what shall you do when you’re forced 
to sit in your loom? For she’ll get busier and mischievouser 
every day — she will, bless her. It’s lucky as you’ve got that 
high hearth i’ stead of a grate, for that keeps the fire more out 
of her reach : but if you’ve got anything as can be spilt or 
broke, or as is fit to cut her fingers off, she’ll be at it — and it 
is but right you should know.” 

Silas meditated a little while in some perplexity. “ I’ll tie 
her to the leg o’ the loom,” he said at last — “tie her with a 
good long strip o’ something.” 

“ Well, mayhap that’ll do, as it’s a little gell, for they’re 
easier persuaded to sit i’ one place nor the lads. I know what 
the lads are; for I’ve had four — four I’ve had, God knows — 
and if you was to take and tie ’em up, they’d make a fighting 
and a crying as if you was ringing the pigs. But I’ll bring 
you my little chair, and some bits o’ red rag and things for 
her to play wi’ ; an’ she’ll sit and chatter to ’em as if they 
was alive. Eh, if it wasn’t a sin to the lads to wish ’em made 
different, bless ’em, I should ha’ been glad for one of ’em 
to be a little gell ; and to think as I could ha’ taught her to 
scour, and mend, and the knitting, and everything. But I can 


SILAS MARKER. 


129 


teach ’em this little un, Master Marner, when she gets old 
enough. ” 

“But she’ll be my little un,” said Marner, rather hastily. 
“ She’ll be nobody else’s.” 

“No, to be sure; you’ll have a right to her, if you’re a 
father to her, and bring her up according. But, ” added Dolly, 
coming to a point which she had determined beforehand to 
touch upon, “ you must bring her up like christened folks’s 
children, and take her to church, and let her learn her cate- 
chism, as my little Aaron can say off — the ‘ I believe,’ and 
everything, and ‘ hurt nobody by word or deed,’ — as well as 
if he was the clerk. That’s what you must do, Master Mar- 
ner, if you’d do the right thing by the orphan child.” 

Marner’ s pale face flushed suddenly under a new anxiety. 
His mind was too busy trying to give some definite bearing to 
Dolly’s words for him to think of answering her. 

“And it’s my belief,” she went on, “as the poor little crea- 
ture has never been christened, and it’s nothing but right as 
the parson should be spoke to; and if you was noways unwill- 
ing, I’d talk to Mr. Macey about it this very day. For if the 
child ever went any ways wrong, and you hadn’t done your part 
by it, Master Marner — ’noculation, and everything to save it 
from harm — it ’ud be a thorn i’ your bed forever o’ this side the 
grave; and I can’t think as it ’ud be easy lying down for any- 
body when they’d got to another world if they hadn’t done their 
part by the helpless children as come wi’out their own asking.” 

Dolly herself was disposed to be silent for some time now, 
for she had spoken from the depths of her own simple belief, 
and was much concerned to know whether her words would 
produce the desired effect on Silas. He was puzzled and anx- 
ious, for Dolly’s word “christened” conveyed no distinct 
meaning to him. He had only heard of baptism, and had 
only seen the baptism of grown-up men and women. 

“ What is it as you mean by ‘ christened ’ ? ” he said at last, 
timidly. “ Won’t folks be good to her without it? ” 

“Dear, dear! Master Marner,” said Dolly, with gentle dis- 
tress and compassion. “ Had you never no father nor mother 
as taught you to say your prayers, and as there’s good words 
and good things to keep us from harm? ” 

9 


130 


SILAS MARNER. 


“Yes,” said Silas, in a low voice; “I know a deal about 
that — used to, used to. But your ways are different: my 
country was a good way off. ” He paused a few moments, and 
then added, more decidedly, “ But I want to do everything as 
can be done for the child. And whatever ’s right for it i’ this 
country, and you think ’ull do it good, I ? ll act according, if 
you’ll tell me.” 

“Well, then, Master Marner,” said Dolly, inwardly re- 
joiced, “I’ll ask Mr. Macey to speak to the parson about it; 
and you must fix on a name for it, because it must have a 
name giv’ it when it’s christened.” 

“My mother’s name was Hephzibah,” said Silas, “and my 
little sister was named after her.” 

“Eh, that’s a hard name,” said Dolly. “I partly think it 
isn’t a christened name.” 

“It’s a Bible name,” said Silas, old ideas recurring. 

“Then I’ve no call to speak again’ it,” said Dolly, rather 
startled by Silas’s knowledge on this head;, “but you see I’m 
no scholard, and I’m slow at catching the words. My hus- 
band says I’m allays like as if I was putting the haft for the 
handle — that’s what he says — for he’s very sharp, God help 
him. But it was awk’ard calling your little sister by such a 
hard name, when you’d got nothing big to say, like — wasn’t 
it, Master Marner?” 

“We called her Eppie,” said Silas. 

“ Well, if it was noways wrong to shorten the name, it ’ud 
be a deal handier. And so I’ll go now, Master Marner, and 
I’ll speak about the christening afore dark; and I wish you 
the best o’ luck, and it’s my belief as it’ll come to you if you 
do what’s right by the orphin child; — and there’s the ’nocu- 
lation to be seen to; and as to washing its bits o’ things, you 
need look to nobody but me, for I can do ’em wi’ one hand 
when I’ve got my suds about. Eh, the blessed angil! You’ll 
let me bring my Aaron one o’ these days, and he’ll show her 
his little cart as his father’s made for him, and the black-and- 
white pup as he’s got a-rearing.” 

Baby was christened, the Rector deciding that a double bap^ 
tism was the lesser risk to incur ; and on this occasion Silas, 
making himself as clean and tidy as he could, appeared for the 


SILAS MARKER. 


131 


first time within the church, and shared in the observances 
held sacred by his neighbors, lie was quite unable, by means 
of anything he heard or saw, to identify the Raveloe religion 
with his old faith ; if he could at any time in his previous life 
have done so, it must have been by the aid of a strong feeling 
ready to vibrate with sympathy, rather than by a comparison 
of phrases and ideas : and now for long years that feeling had 
been dormant. He had no distinct idea about the baptism and 
the church-going, except that Dolly had said it was for the 
good of the child; and in this way, as the weeks grew to 
months, the child created fresh and fresh links between his 
life and the lives from which he had hitherto shrunk continu- 
ally into narrower isolation. Unlike the gold which needed 
nothing, and must be worshipped in close-locked solitude — 
which was hidden away from the daylight, was deaf to the 
song of birds, and started to no human tones — Eppie was a 
creature of endless claims and ever-growing desires, seeking 
and loving sunshine, and living sounds, and living movements; 
making trial of everything, with trust in new joy, and stirring 
the human-kindness in all eyes that looked on her. The gold 
had kept his thoughts in an ever-repeated circle, leading to 
nothing beyond itself; but Eppie was an object compacted of 
changes and hopes that forced his thoughts onward, and car- 
ried them far away from their old eager pacing toward the 
same blank limit — carried them away to the new things that 
would come with the coming years, when Eppie would have 
learned to understand how her father Silas cared for her ; and 
made him look for images of that time in the ties and charities 
that bound together the families of his neighbors. The gold 
had asked that he should sit weaving longer and longer, deaf- 
ened and blinded more and more to all things except the mo- 
notony of his loom and the repetition of his web ; but Eppie 
called him away from his weaving, and made him think all its 
pauses a holiday, reawakening his senses with her fresh life, 
even to the old winter-flies that came crawling forth in the 
early spring sunshine, and warming him into joy because she 
had joy. 

And when the sunshine grew strong and lasting, so that the 
buttercups were thick in the meadows, Silas might be seen in 


132 


SILAS MARNER. 


the sunny mid-day, or in the late afternoon when the shadows 
were lengthening under the hedgerows, strolling out with un- 
covered head to carry Eppie beyond the Stone-pits to where 
the flowers grew, till they reached some favorite bank where 
he could sit down, while Eppie toddled to pluck the flowers, 
and make remarks to the winged things that murmured hap- 
pily above the bright petals, calling “ Dad-dad’s ” attention 
continually by bringing him the flowers. Then she would turn 
her ear to some sudden bird-note, and Silas learned to please 
her by making signs of hushed stillness, that they might listen 
for the note to come again : so that when it came, she set up 
her small back and laughed with gurgling triumph. Sitting 
on the banks in this way, Silas began to look for the once fa- 
miliar herbs again ; and as the leaves, with their unchanged 
outline and markings, lay on his palm, there was a sense of 
crowding remembrances from which he turned away timidly, 
taking refuge in Eppie’ s little world, that lay lightly on his 
enfeebled spirit. 

As the child’s mind was growing into knowledge, his mind 
was growing into memory : as her life unfolded, his soul, long 
stupefied in a cold narrow prison, was unfolding too, and 
trembling gradually into full consciousness. 

It was an influence which must gather force with every new 
year: the tones that stirred Silas’s heart grew articulate, and 
called for more distinct answers; shapes and sounds grew 
clearer for Eppie’ s eyes and ears, and there was more that 
“ Dad-dad ” was imperatively required to notice and account 
for. Also, by the time Eppie was three years old, she devel- 
oped a fine capacity for mischief, and for devising ingenious 
ways of being troublesome, which found much exercise, not 
only for Silas’s patience, but for his watchfulness and pene- 
tration. Sorely was poor Silas puzzled on such occasions by 
the incompatible demands of love. Dolly Winthrop told him 
that punishment was good for Eppie, and that, as for rearing 
a child without making it tingle a little in soft and safe places 
now and then, it was not to be done. 

“ To be sure, there’s another thing you might do, Master 
Marner, ” added Dolly, meditatively ; “ you might shut her up 
once in the coal-hole. That was what I did wi’ Aaron ; for I 


SILAS MARKER. 


133 


was that silly wi’ the youngest lad as I could never bear to 
smack him. Not as I could find i’ my heart to let him stay i’ 
the coal-hole more nor a minute, but it was enough to colly him 
all over, so as he must be new washed and dressed, and it was 
as good as a rod to him — that was. But I put it upo’ your 
conscience, Master Marner, as there’s one of ’em you must 
choose — ayther smacking or the coal-hole — else she’ll get so 
masterful there’ll be no holding her.” 

Silas was impressed with the melancholy truth of this last 
remark ; but his force of mind failed before the only two penal 
methods open to him, not only because it was painful to him 
to hurt Eppie, but because he trembled at a moment’s conten- 
tion with her, lest she should love him the less for it. Let 
even an affectionate Goliath get himself tied to a small tender 
thing, dreading to hurt it by pulling, and dreading still more 
to snap the cord, and which of the two, pray, will be master? 
It was clear that Eppie, with her short toddling steps, must 
lead father Silas a pretty dance on any fine morning when cir- 
cumstances favored mischief. 

Eor example. He had wisely chosen a broad strip of linen 
as a means of fastening her to his loom when he was busy : it 
made a broad belt round her waist, and was long enough to 
allow of her reaching the trundle-bed and sitting down on it, 
but not long enough for her to attempt any dangerous climbing. 
One bright summer’s morning Silas had been more engrossed 
than usual in “ setting up ” a new piece of work, an occasion 
on which his scissors were in requisition. These scissors, 
owing to an especial warning of Dolly’s, had been kept care- 
fully out of Eppie’ s reach ; but the click of them had had a pe- 
culiar attraction for her ear, and, watching the results of that 
click, she had derived the philosophic lesson that the same 
cause would produce the same effect. Silas had seated him- 
self in his loom, and the noise of weaving had begun ; but he 
had left his scissors on a ledge which Eppie’ s arm was long 
enough to reach ; and now, like a small mouse, watching her 
opportunity, she stole quietly from her corner, secured the 
scissors, and toddled to the bed again, setting up her back as 
a mode of concealing the fact. She had a distinct intention 
as to the use of the scissors ; and having cut the linen strip in 


134 


SILAS MARKER. 


a jagged but effectual manner, in two moments she had run 
out at the open door, where the sunshine was inviting her, 
while poor Silas believed her to be a better child than usual. 
It was not until he happened to need his scissors that the ter- 
rible fact burst upon him : Eppie had run out by herself — had 
perhaps fallen into the Stone-pit. Silas, shaken by the worst 
fear that could have befallen him, rushed out, calling “ Eppie! ” 
and ran eagerly about the unenclosed space, exploring the dry 
cavities into which she might have fallen, and then gazing 
with questioning dread at the smooth red surface of the water. 
The cold drops stood on his brow. How long had she been 
out? There was one hope — that she had crept through the 
stile and got into the fields, where he habitually took her to 
stroll. But the grass was high in the meadow, and there was 
no descrying her, if she were there, except by a close search 
that would be a trespass on Mr. Osgood’s crop. Still, that 
misdemeanor must be committed; and poor Silas, after peer- 
ing all round the hedgerows, traversed the grass, beginning 
with perturbed vision to see Eppie behind every group of red 
sorrel, and to see her moving always farther off as he ap- 
proached. The meadow was searched in vain; and he got 
over the stile into the next field, looking with dying hope tow- 
ard a small pond which was now reduced to its summer shal- 
lowness, so as to leave a wide margin of good adhesive mud. 
Here, however, sat Eppie, discoursing cheerfully to her own 
small boot, which she was using as a bucket to convey the 
water into a deep hoof-mark, while her little naked foot was 
planted comfortably on a cushion of olive-green mud. A red- 
headed calf was observing her with alarmed doubt through the 
opposite hedge. 

Here was clearly a case of aberration in a christened child 
which demanded severe treatment; but Silas, overcome with 
convulsive joy at finding his treasure again, could do noth- 
ing but snatch her up and cover her with half-sobbing kisses. 
It was not until he had carried her home, and had begun 
to think of the necessary washing, that he recollected the 
need that he should punish Eppie, and “make her remem- 
ber.” The idea that she might run away again and come 
to harm gave him unusual resolution, and for the first time 


SILAS MARNER. 135 

he determined to try the coal-hole — a small closet near the 
hearth. 

“ Naughty, naughty Eppie,” he suddenly began, holding her 
on his knee, and pointing to her muddy feet and clothes — 
“ naughty to cut with the scissors and run away. Eppie must 
go into the coal-hole for being naughty. Daddy must put her 
in the coal-hole.” 

He half-expected that this would be shock enough, and that 
Eppie would begin to cry. But instead of that she began to 
shake herself on his knee, as if the proposition opened a pleas- 
ing novelty. Seeing that he must proceed to extremities, he 
put her into the coal-hole and held the door closed, with a 
trembling sense that he was using a strong measure. For a 
moment there was silence, but then came a little cry, “ Opy, 
opy!” and Silas let her out again, saying, “Now Eppie ’ull 
never be naughty again, else she must go in the coal-hole — a 
black naughty place.” 

The weaving must stand still a long while this morning, for 
now Eppie must be washed, and have clean clothes on; but it 
was to be hoped that this punishment would have a lasting 
effect, and save time in future — though, perhaps, it would 
have been better if Eppie had cried more. 

In half an hour she was clean again, and Silas, having turned 
his back to see what he could do with the linen band, threw it 
down again, with the reflection that Eppie would be good 
without fastening for the rest of the morning. He turned 
round again, and was going to place her in her little chair near 
the loom, when she peeped out at him with black face and 
hands again, and said, “ Eppie in de toal-hole ! ” 

This total failure of the- coal-hole discipline shook Silas’s 
belief in the efficacy of punishment. “She’d take it all for 
fun, ” he observed to Dolly, “ if I didn’ t hurt her, and that I 
can’t do, Mrs. Winthrop. If she makes me a bit o’ trouble, I 
can bear it. And she’s got no tricks but what she’ll grow 
out of. ” 

“Well, that’s partly true, Master Marner,” said Dolly, 
sympathetically; “ and if you can’t bring your mind to fright- 
en her off touching things, you must do what you can to keep 
’em out of her way. That’s what I do wi’ the pups as the 


136 


SILAS MARKER. 


lads are always a-rearing. They will worry and gnaw — worry 
and gnaw they will, if it was one’s Sunday cap as hung any- 
where so as they could drag it. They know no difference, 
God help ’em: it’s the pushing o’ the teeth as sets ’em on, 
that’s what it is.” 

So Eppie was reared without punishment, the burden of her 
misdeeds being borne vicariously by father Silas. The stone 
hut was made a soft nest for her, lined with downy patience: 
and also in the world that lay beyond the stone hut she knew 
nothing of frowns and denials. 

Notwithstanding the difficulty of carrying her and his yarn 
or linen at the same time, Silas took her with him in most of 
his journeys to the farm-houses, unwilling to leave her behind 
at Dolly Winthrop’s, who was always ready to take care of 
her ; and little curly-headed Eppie, the weaver’ s child, became 
an object of interest at several outlying homesteads, as well as 
in the village. Hitherto he had been treated very much as if 
he had been a useful gnome or brownie — a queer and unac- 
countable creature, who must necessarily be looked at with 
wondering curiosity and repulsion, and with whom one would 
be glad to make all greetings and bargains as brief as possible, 
but who must be dealt with in a propitiatory way, and occa- 
sionally have a present of pork or garden-stuff to carry home 
with him, seeing that without him there was no getting the 
yarn woven. But now Silas met with open smiling faces and 
cheerful questioning, as a person whose satisfactions and diffi- 
culties could be understood. Everywhere he must sit a little 
and talk about the child, and words of interest were always 
ready for him : “ Ah, Master Marner, you’ 11 be lucky if she 
takes the measles soon and easy!” — or, “Why, there isn’t 
many lone men ’ud ha’ been wishing to take up with a little 
un like that : but I reckon the weaving makes you handier than 
men as do outdoor work — you’re partly as handy as a woman, 
for weaving comes next to spinning.” Elderly masters and 
mistresses, seated observantly in large kitchen arm-chairs, 
shook their heads over the difficulties attendant on rearing 
children, felt Eppie’ s round arms and legs, and pronounced 
them remarkably firm, and told Silas that, if she turned out 
well (which, however, there was no telling), it would be a fine 


SILAS MARNER. 


137 


thing for him to have a steady lass to do for him when he got 
helpless. Servant maidens were fond of carrying her out to 
look at the hens and chickens, or to see if any cherries could 
be shaken down in the orchard ; and the small boys and girls ap- 
proached her slowly, with cautious movement and steady gaze, 
like little dogs face to face with one of their own kind, till 
attraction had reached the point at which the soft lips were 
put out for a kiss. No child was afraid of approaching Silas 
when Eppie was near him : there was no repulsion around him 
now, either for young or old ; for the little child had come to 
link him once more with the whole world. There was love 
between him and the child that blent them into one, and there 
was love between the child and the world — from men and 
women with parental looks and tones, to the red lady-birds and 
the round pebbles. 

Silas began now to think of Raveloe life entirely in relation 
to Eppie : she must have everything that was good in Raveloe ; 
and he listened docilely, that he might come to understand 
better what this life was from which, for fifteen years, he had 
stood aloof as from a strange thing, wherewith he could have 
no communion: as some man who has a precious plant to 
which he would give a nurturing home in a new soil thinks of 
the rain, and the sunshine, and all influences, in relation to his 
nursling, and asks industriously for all knowledge that will 
help him to satisfy the wants of the searching roots, or to 
guard leaf and bud from invading harm. The disposition to 
hoard had been utterly crushed at the very first by the loss of 
his long-stored gold : the coins he earned afterward seemed as 
irrelevant as stones brought to complete a house suddenly bur- 
ied by an earthquake; the sense of bereavement was too heavy 
upon him for the old thrill of satisfaction to arise again at the 
touch of the newly earned coin. And now something had 
come to replace his hoard which gave a growing purpose to the 
earnings, drawing his hope and joy continually onward beyond 
the money. 

In old days there were angels who came and took men by 
the hand and led them away from the city of destruction. 
We /?ee no white-winged angels now. But yet men are led 
away from threatening destruction : a hand is put into theirs, 


138 


SILAS MARNER. 


which leads them forth gently toward a calm and bright land, 
so that they look no more backward ; and the hand may be a 
little child’s. 


CHAPTER XY. 

There was one person, as you will believe, who watched 
with keener though more hidden interest than any other the 
prosperous growth of Eppie under the weaver’s care. He 
dared not do anything that would imply a stronger interest in 
a poor man’s adopted child than could be expected from the 
kindliness of the young Squire, when a chance meeting sug- 
gested a little present to a simple old fellow whom others no- 
ticed with good-will ; but he told himself that the time would 
come when he might do something toward furthering the wel- 
fare of his daughter without incurring suspicion. Was he 
very uneasy in the mean time at his inability to give his daugh- 
ter her birthright? I cannot say that he was. The child was 
being taken care of, and would very likely be happy, as peo- 
ple in humble stations often were — happier, perhaps, than 
those brought up in luxury. 

That famous ring that pricked its owner when he forgot 
duty and followed desire — I wonder if it pricked very hard 
when he set out on the chase, or whether it pricked but lightly 
then, and only pierced to the quick when the chase had long 
# been ended, and hope, folding her wings, looked backward and 
became regret? 

Godfrey Cass’s cheek and eye were brighter than ever now. 
He was so undivided in his aims that he seemed L ; ke a man 
of firmness. No Dunseyhad come back: people had made up 
their minds that he was gone for a soldier, or gone “ out of the 
country,” and no one cared to be specific in their inquiries on 
a subject delicate to a respectable family. Godfrey had ceased 
to see the shadow of Dunsey across his path; and the path 
now lay straight forward to the accomplishment of his best, 
longest-cherished wishes. Everybody said Mr. Godfrey had 
taken the right turn ; and it was pretty clear what wou\d be 
the end of things, ±Gr there were not many days in th a week 


SILAS MARNER. 


139 


that he was not seen riding to the Warrens. Godfrey himself, 
when he was asked jocosely if the day had been fixed, smiled 
with the pleasant consciousness of a lover who could say 
“ yes ” if he liked. He felt a reformed man, delivered from 
temptation ; and the vision of his future life seemed to him as 
a promised land for which he had no cause to fight. He saw 
himself with all his happiness centred on his own hearth, 
while Nancy would smile on him as he played with the chil- 
dren. 

And that other child, not on the hearth — he would not for- 
get it ; he would see that it was well provided for. That was 
a father 7 s duty. 


PART II. 


CHAPTER XVI. 

It was a bright autumn Sunday, sixteen years after Silas 
Marner had found his new treasure on the hearth. The bells 
of the old Kaveloe church were ringing the cheerful peal which 
told that the morning service was ended; and out of the 
arched door-way in the tower came slowly, retarded by friendly 
greetings and questions, the richer parishioners who had 
chosen this bright Sunday morning as eligible for church- 
going. It was the rural fashion of that time for the more impor- 
tant members of the congregation to depart first, while their 
humbler neighbors waited and looked on, stroking their bent 
heads or dropping their courtesies to any large rate-payer who 
turned to notice them. 

Foremost among these advancing groups of well-clad people 
there are some whom we shall recognize, in spite cf Time, who 
has laid his hand on them all. The tall blond man of forty 
is not much changed in feature from the Godfrey Cass of six 
and twenty : he is only fuller in flesh, and has only lost the 
indefinable look of youth — a loss which is marked even when 
the eye is undulled and the wrinkles are not yet come. Per- 
haps the pretty woman, not much younger than ho, who is 
leaning on his arm is more changed than her husband : the 
lovely bloom that used to be always on her cheek now comes 
but fitfully, with the fresh morning air or with some strong 
surprise ; yet to all who love human faces best for what they 
tell of human experience, Nancy’s beauty has a heightened 
interest. Often the soul is ripened into fuller goodness while 
age has spread an ugly film, so that mere glances can never 
divine the preciousness of the fruit. But the years have not 
been so cruel to Nancy. The firm yet placid mouth, the clear 


SILAS MARKER. 


141 


veracious glance of the brown eyes, speak now of a nature 
that has been tested and has kept its highest qualities ; and 
even the costume, with its dainty neatness and purity, has 
more significance now the coquetries of yorlth can have noth- 
ing to do with it. 

Mr. and Mrs. Godfrey Cass (any higher title has died away 
from Raveloe lips since the old Squire was gathered to his 
fathers and his inheritance was divided) have turned round to 
look for the tall aged man and the plainly dressed woman who 
are a little behind — Nancy having observed that they must 
wait for “ father and Priscilla ” — and now they all turn into 
a narrower path leading across the churchyard to a small gate 
opposite the Red House. We will not follow them now; for 
may there not be some others in this departing congregation 
whom we should like to see again — some of those who are not 
likely to be handsomely clad, and whom we may not recognize 
so easily as the master and mistress of the Red House? 

But it is impossible to mistake Silas Marner. His large 
brown eyes seem to have gathered a longer vision, as is the 
way with eyes that have been short-sighted in early life, and 
they have a less vague, a more answering gaze ; but in every- 
thing else one sees signs of a frame much enfeebled by the 
lapse of the sixteen years. The weaver’s bent shoulders and 
white hair give him almost the look of advanced age, though 
he is not more than five and fifty ; but there is the freshest 
blossom of youth close by his side — a blond dimpled girl of 
eighteen, who has vainly tried to chastise her curly auburn 
hair into smoothness under her brown bonnet : the hair ripples 
as obstinately as a brooklet under the March breeze, and the 
little ringlets burst away from the restraining comb behind 
and show themselves below the bonnet-crown. Eppie cannot 
help being rather vexed about her hair, for there is no other 
girl in Raveloe who has hair at all like it, and she thinks hair 
ought to be smooth. She does not like to be blameworthy 
even in small things : you see how neatly her prayer-book is 
folded in her spotted handkerchief. 

That good-looking young fellow, in a new fustian suit, who 
walks behind her is not quite sure upon the question of hair 
in the abstract, when Eppie puts it to him, and thinks that 


142 


SILAS MARKER. 


perhaps straight hair is the best in general, but he doesn’t 
want Eppie’ s hair to be different. She surely divines that 
there is some one behind her who is thinking about her very 
particularly, and mustering courage to come to her side as 
soon as they are out in the lane, else why should she look 
rather shy, and take care not to turn away her head from her 
father Silas, to whom she keeps murmuring little sentences as 
to who was at church, and who was not at church, and how 
pretty the red mountain-ash is over the Rectory wall! 

“ I wish we had a little garden, father, with double daisies 
in, like Mrs. Winthrop’s,” said Eppie, when they were out in 
the lane; “only they say it ’ud take a deal of digging and 
bringing fresh soil — and you couldn’t do that, could you, 
father? Anyhow, I shouldn’t like you to do it, for it ’ud be 
too hard work for you. ” 

“Yes, I could do it, child, if you want a bit o’ garden : 
these long evenings, I could work at taking in a little bit o’ the 
waste, just enough for a root or two o’ flowers for you; and 
again, i’ the morning, I could have a turn wi’ the spade before 
I sat down to the loom. Why didn’t you tell me before as 
you wanted a bit o’ garden?” 

“/ can dig it for you, Master Marner,” said the young man 
in fustian, who was now by Eppie’ s side, entering into the 
conversation without the trouble of formalities. “ It’ll be play 
to me after I've done my day’s work, or any odd bits o’ time 
wnen the work’s slack. And I’ll bring you some soil from 
Mr. Cass’s garden — he’ll let me, and willing.” 

“ Eh, Aaron, my lad, are you there? ” said Silas. “ I wasn’t 
aware of you ; for when Eppie’ s talking o’ things, I see noth 
ing but what she’s a-saying. Well, if you could help me 
with the digging, we might get her a bit o’ garden all the 
sooner.” 

“ Then, if you think well and good,” said Aaron, “ I’ll come 
to the Stone-pits this afternoon, and we’ll settle what land’s 
to be taken in, and I’ll get up an hour earlier i’ the morning, 
and begin on it.” 

“But not if you don’t promise me not to work at the 
hard digging, father,” said Eppie. “For I shouldn’t ha’ 
said anything about it,” she added, L^f -bashfully, half- 


SILAS MARKER. 


143 


roguishly, “only Mrs. Winthrop said as Aaron ’ud be so 
good, and ” 

“And you might ha’ known it without mother telling you,” 
said Aaron. “ And Master Marner knows too, I hope, as 
I’m able and willing to do a turn o’ work for him, and he 
won’t do me the unkindness to anyways take it out o’ my 
hands.” 

“ There, now, father, you won’t work in it till it’s all easy,” 
said Eppie, “ and you and me can mark out the beds, and 
make holes and plant the roots. It’ll be a deal livelier at the 
Stone-pits when we’ve got some flowers, for I always think 
the flowers can see us and know what we’re talking about^ 
And I’ll have a bit o’ rosemary, and bergamot, and thyme, 
because they’re so sweet-smelling; but there’s no lavender 
only in the gentlefolks’ gardens, I think.” 

“That’s no reason why you shouldn’t have some,” said 
Aaron, “for I can bring you slips of anything; I’m forced to 
cut no end of ’em when I’m gardening, and throw ’em away 
mostly. There’s a big bed o’ lavender at the Red House : the 
missis is very fond of it.” 

“ Well,” said Silas, gravely, “ so as you don’t make free for 
us, or ask for anything as is worth much at the Red House : 
for Mr. Cass’s been so good to us, and built us up the new end 
o’ the cottage, and given us beds and things, as I couldn’t 
abide to be imposin’ for garden-stuff or anything else.” 

“Ho, no, there’s no imposin’,” said Aaron; “there’s never 
a garden in all the parish but what there’s endless waste in it 
for want o’ somebody as could use everything up. It’s what 
I think to myself sometimes as there need nobody run short 
o’ victuals if the land was made the most on, and there was 
never a morsel but what could find its way to a mouth. It 
sets one thinking o’ that — gardening does. But I must go 
back now, else mother ’ull be in trouble as I aren’t there.” 

“ Bring her with you this afternoon, Aaron, ” said Eppie ; 
“I shouldn’t like to fix about the garden, and her not know 
everything from the first — should you , father?” 

“Ay, bring her if you can, Aaron,” said Silas; “she’s sine 
to have a word to say as’ 11 help us to set things on their 
right end.” 


144 


SILAS MARKER. 


Aaron turned back up the village, while Silas and Eppie 
went on up the lonely sheltered lane. 

“ 0 daddy ! ” she began, when they were in privacy, clasp- 
ing and squeezing Silas’s arm, and skipping round to give 
him an energetic kiss. “My little old daddy! I’m so glad! 
I don’t think I shall want anything else when we’ve got a lit- 
tle garden ; and I knew Aaron would dig it for us, ” she went 
on with roguish triumph — “ I knew that very well.” 

“You’re a deep little puss, you are,” said Silas, with the 
mild passive happiness of love-crowned age in his face ; “ but 
you’ll make yourself fine and beholden to Aaron.” 

“ Oh, no, I sha’n’t,” said Eppie, laughing and frisking; “he 
likes it.” 

“ Come, come, let me carry your prayer-book, else you’ll be 
dropping it, jumping i’ that way.” 

Eppie was now aware that her behavior was under observa- 
tion, but it was only the observation of a friendly donkey, 
browsing with a log fastened to his foot — a meek donkey, not 
scornfully critical of human trivialities, but thankful to share 
in them, if possible, by getting his nose scratched ; and Eppie 
did not fail to gratify him with her usual notice, though it was 
attended with the inconvenience of his following them, pain- 
fully, up to the very door of their home. 

But the sound of a sharp bark inside, as Eppie put the key 
in the door, modified the donkey’s views, and he limped away 
again without bidding. The sharp bark was the sign of an 
excited welcome that was awaiting them from a knowing 
brown terrier, who, after dancing at their legs in a hysterical 
manner, rushed with a worrying noise at a tortoise-shell kitten 
under the loom, and then rushed back with a sharp bark again, 
as much as to say, “ I have done my duty by this feeble crea- 
ture, you perceive ” ; while the lady-mother of the kitten sat 
sunning her white bosom in the window, and looked round 
with a sleepy air of expecting caresses, though she was not 
going to take any trouble for them. 

The presence of this happy animal life was not the only 
change which had come over the interior of the stone cottage. 
There was no bed now in the living-room, and the small space 
was well filled with decent furniture, all bright and clean 


SILAS MARKER. 


145 


enough to satisfy Dolly Winthrop’s eye. The oaken table and 
three-cornered oaken chair were hardly what was likely to be 
seen in so poor a cottage : they had come, with the beds and 
other things, from the Red House; for Mr. Godfrey Cass, as 
every one said in the village, did very kindly by the weaver; 
and it was nothing but right a man should be looked on and 
helped by those who could afford it, when he had brought up 
an orphan child, and been father and mother to her — and had 
lost his money too, so as he had nothing but what he worked 
for week by week, and when the weaving was going down too 
— for there was less and less flax spun — and Master Marner 
was none so young. Nobody was jealous of the weaver, for 
he was regarded as an exceptional person, whose claims on 
neighborly help were not to be matched in Raveloe. Any 
superstition that remained concerning him had taken an en- 
tirely new color ; and Mr. Macey, now a very feeble old man 
of four score and six, never seen except in his chimney-corner 
or sitting in the sunshine at his door-sill, was of opinion that 
when a man had done what Silas had done by an orphan child, 
it was a sign that his money would come to light again, or 
leastwise that the robber would be made to answer for it — for, 
as Mr. Macey observed of himself, his faculties were as strong 
as ever. 

Silas sat down now and watched Eppie with a satisfied gaze 
as she spread the clean cloth, and set on it the potato-pie, 
warmed up slowly, in a safe Sunday fashion, by being put into 
a dry pot over a slowly dying fire, as the best substitute for 
an oven. Eor Silas would not consent to have a grate and 
oven added to his conveniences : he loved the old brick hearth 
as he had loved his brown pot — and was it not there when he 
had found Eppie? The gods of the hearth exist for us still; 
and let all new faith be tolerant of that fetishism, lest it 
bruise its own roots. 

Silas ate his dinner more silently than usual, soon laying 
down his knife and fork, and watching half abstractedly Ep- 
pie’s play with Snap and the cat, by which her own dining 
was made rather a lengthy business. Yet it was a sight that 
might well arrest wandering thoughts : Eppie, with the rip- 
pling radiance of her hair and the whiteness of her rounded 
10 


146 


SILAS MARNER. 


chin and throat set off by the dark-blue cotton gown, laughing 
merrily as the kitten held on with her four claws to one shoul- 
der, like a design for a jug handle, while Snap on the right 
hand and Puss on the other put up their paws toward a mor- 
sel which she held out of the reach of both — Snap occasionally 
desisting in order to remonstrate with the cat by a cogent wor- 
rying growl on the greediness and futility of her conduct; till 
Eppie relented, caressed them both, and divided the morsel 
between them. 

But at last Eppie, glancing at the clock, checked the play, 
and said, “ 0 daddy, you’re wanting to go into the sunshine to 
smoke your pipe. But I must clear away first, so as the house 
may be tidy when godmother comes. I’ll make haste — I 
won’t be long.” 

Silas had taken to smoking a pipe daily during the last two 
years, having been strongly urged to it by the sages of Rave- 
loe as a practice “ good for the fits ” ; and this advice was 
sanctioned by Dr. Kimble, on the ground that it was as well 
to try what could do no harm — a principle which was made to 
answer for a great deal of work in that gentleman’s medical 
practice. Silas did not highly enjoy smoking, and often won- 
dered how his neighbors could be so fond of it; but a humble 
sort of acquiescence in what was held to be good had become 
a strong habit of that new self which had been developed in 
him since he had found Eppie on his hearth : it had been the 
only clew his bewildered mind could hold by in cherishing 
this young life that had been sent to him out of the darkness 
into which his gold had departed. By seeking what was need- 
ful for Eppie, by sharing the effect that everything produced 
on her, he had himself come to appropriate the forms of cus- 
tom and belief which were the mould of Raveloe life ; and as, 
with reawakening sensibilities, memory also reawakened, he 
had begun to ponder over the elements of his old faith, and 
blend them with his new impressions, till he recovered a con- 
sciousness of unity between his past and present. The sense 
of presiding goodness and the human trust which come with 
all pure peace and joy had given him a dim impression that 
there had been some errov, some mistake, which had thrown 
that dark shadow over the days of his best years ; and as it 


SILAS MARNER. 


147 


grew more and more easy to him to open his mind to Dolly 
Winthrop, he gradually communicated to her all he could de- 
scribe of his early life. The communication was necessarily 
a slow and difficult process, for Silas’s meagre power of ex- 
planation was not aided by any readiness of interpretation in 
Dolly, whose narrow outward experience gave her no key to 
strange customs, and made every novelty a source of wonder 
that arrested them at every step of the narrative. It was only 
by fragments, and at intervals which left Dolly time to re- 
volve what she had heard till it acquired some familiarity for 
her, that Silas at last arrived at the climax of the sad story — 
the drawing of lots, and its false testimony concerning him; 
and this had to be repeated in several interviews, under new 
questions on her part as to the nature of this plan for detect- 
ing the guilty and clearing the innocent. 

“ And yourn’s the same Bible, you’re sure o’ that, Master 
Marner — the Bible as you brought wi’ you from that country 
. — it’s the same as what they’ve got at church, and what Ep- 
pie’s a-learning to read in? ” 

“Yes,” said Silas, “every bit the same; and there’s draw- 
ing o’ lots in the Bible, mind you,” he added, in a lower 
tone. 

“ Oh, dear, dear, ” said Dolly, in a grieved voice, as if she were 
hearing an unfavorable report of a sick man’s case. She was 
silent for some minutes ; at last she said — 

“There’s wise folks, happen, as know how it all is; the 
parson knows, I’ll be bound; but it takes big words to tell 
them things, and such as poor folks can’t make much out on. 
I can never rightly know the meaning o’ what I hear at church, 
only a bit here and there, but I know it’s good words — I do. 
But what lies upo’ your mind — it’s this, Master Marner: as, 
if Them above had done the right thing by you, They’d never 
ha’ let you be turned out for a wicked thief when you was 
innicent. ” 

“Ah! ” said Silas, who had now come to understand Dolly’s 
phraseology, “ that was what fell on me like as if it had been 
red-hot iron ; because, you see, there was nobody as cared for 
me or clave to me above nor below. And him as I’d gone out 
and in wi’ for ten year and more, since when we was lads and 


148 


SILAS MARKER. 


went halves — mine own familiar friend in whom I trusted, had 
lifted up his heel again’ me, and worked to ruin me.” 

“Eh, but he was a bad un — I can’t think as there’s anoth- 
er such,” said Dolly. “But I’m o’ercome, Master Marner; 
I’m like as if I’d waked and didn’t know whether it was 
night or morning. I feel somehow as sure as I do when I’ve 
laid something up though I can’t justly put my hand on it as 
there was a rights in what happened to you, if one could but 
make it out; and you’d no call to lose heart as you did. But 
we’ll talk on it again ; for sometimes things come into my head 
when I’m leeching or poulticing, or such, as I could never 
think on when I was sitting still.” 

Dolly was too useful a woman not to have many opportuni- 
ties of illumination of the kind she alluded to, and she was 
not long before she recurred to the subject. 

“ Master Marner, ” she said, one day that she came to bring 
home Eppie’s washing, “I’ve been sore puzzled for a good bit 
wi’ that trouble o’ yourn and the drawing o’ lots ; and it got 
twisted back’ards and for’ards, as I didn’t know which end to 
lay hold on. But it come to me all clear like, that night 
when I was sitting up wi’ poor Bessy Fawkes, as is dead and 
left her children behind, God help ’em — it come to me as clear 
as daylight; but whether I’ve got hold on it now, or can any- 
ways bring it to my tongue’s end, that I don’t know. For 
I’ve often a deal inside me as ’ll never come out; and for 
what you talk o’ your folks in your old country niver saying 
prayers by heart nor saying ’em out of a book, they must be 
wonderful diver; for if I didn’t know* Our Father,’ and little 
bits o’ good words as I can carry out o’ church wi’ me, I might 
down o’ my knees every night, but nothing could I say.” 

“ But you can mostly say something as I can make sense on, 
Mrs. Winthrop,” said Silas. 

“Well, then, Master Marner, it come to me summat like 
this : I can make nothing o’ the drawing o’ lots and the answer 
coming wrong; it ’ud mayhap take the parson to tell that, and 
he could only tell us i’ big words. But what come to me as 
clear as the daylight, it was when I was troubling over poor 
Bessy Fawkes, and it allays comes into my head when I’m 
sorry for folks, and feel as I can’t do a power to help ’em, 


SILAS MARKER. 


149 


not if I was to get up i’ the middle o’ the night — it comes 
into my head as Them above has got a deal tenderer heart nor 
what I’ve got — for I can’t be anyways better nor Them as 
made me; and if anything looks hard to me, it’s because 
there’s things I don’t know on; and, for the matter o’ that, 
there may be plenty o’ things I don’t know on, for it’s little 
as I know — that it is. And so, while I was thinking o’ that, 
you come into my mind, Master Marner, and it all come pour- 
ing in : — if 1 felt i’ my inside what was the right and just 
thing by you, and them as prayed and drawed the lots, all 
but that wicked un, if they ’ d ha’ done the right thing by you 
if they could, isn’t there Them as was at the making on us, 
and knows better and has a better will? And that’s all as 
ever I can be sure on, and everything else is a big puzzle to 
me when I think on it. For there was the fever come and 
took off them as were full-growed, and left the helpless chil- 
dren; and there’s the breaking o’ limbs; and them as ’ud do 
right and be sober have to suffer by them as are contrairy — 
eh, there’s trouble i’ this world, and there’s things as we can 
niver make out the rights on. And all as we’ve got to do is 
to trustee, Master Marner — to do the right thing as fur as we 
know, and to trusten. For if us as knows so little can see a 
bit o’ good and rights, we may be sure as there’s a good and 
a rights bigger nor what we can know — I feel it i’ my own 
inside as it must be so. And if you could but ha’ gone on 
trustening, Master Marner, you wouldn’t ha’ run away from 
your fellow-creaturs and been so lone.” 

“ Ah, but that ’ud ha’ been hard, ” said Silas, in an under- 
tone; “it ’ud lia’ been hard to trusten then.” 

“ And so it would, ” said Dolly, almost with compunction ; 
“ them things are easier said nor done ; arid I’m partly ashamed 
o’ talking.” 

“Nay, nay,” said Silas, “you’re i’ the right, Mrs. Win- 
throp — you’re i’ the right. There’s good i’ this world — I’ve 
a feeling o’ that now; and it makes a man feel as there’s a 
good more nor he can see, i’ spite o’ the trouble and the wick- 
edness. That drawing o’ the lots is dark ; but the child was 
sent to me: there’s dealings with us — there’s dealings.” 

This dialogue took place in Eppie’s earlier years, w^ 


150 


SILAS MARNER. 


las had to part with her for two hours every day, that she 
might learn to read at the dame school, after he had vainly 
tried himself to guide her in that first step to learning. Now 
that she was grown up, Silas had often been led, in those 
moments of quiet outpouring which come to people who live 
together in perfect love, to talk with her too of the past, and 
how and why he had lived a lonely man until she had been 
sent to him. For it would have been impossible for him to 
hide from Eppie that she was not his own child* even if the 
most delicate reticence on the point could have been expected 
from Raveloe gossips in her presence, her own questions about 
her mother could not have been parried, as she grew up, with- 
out that complete shrouding of the past which would have 
made a painful barrier between their minds. So Eppie had 
long known how her mother had died on the snowy ground, 
and how she herself had been found on the hearth by father 
Silas, who had taken her golden curls for his lost guineas 
brought back to him. The tender and peculiar love witn 
which Silas had reared her in almost inseparable companion- 
ship with himself, aided by the seclusion of their dwelling, 
had preserved her from the lowering influences of the village 
talk and habits, and had kept her mind in that freshness 
which is sometimes falsely supposed to be an invariable attri- 
bute of rusticity. Perfect love has a breath of poetry which 
can exalt the relations of the least-instructed human beings ; 
and this breath of poetry had surrounded Eppie from the time 
when she had followed the bright gleam that beckoned her to 
Silas’s hearth; so that it is not surprising if, in other things 
besides her delicate prettiness, she was not quite a common 
village maiden, but had a touch of refinement and fervor which 
came from no other teaching than that of tenderly nurtured 
unvitiated feeling. She was too childish and simple for her 
imagination to rove into questions about her unknown father ; 
for a long while it did not even occur to her that she must have 
had a father ; and the first time that the idea of her mother 
having had a husband presented itself to her was when Silas 
showed her the wedding-ring which had been taken from the 
wasted finger, and had been carefully preserved by him in a 
lacquered box shaped like a shoe. He delivered this box 


SILAS MARNER. 


151 


into Eppie’ s charge when she had grown up, and she often 
opened it to look at the ring : but still she thought hardly at 
all about the father of whom it was the symbol. Had she not 
a father very close to her, who loved her better than any real 
fathers in the village seemed to love their daughters? On the 
contrary, who her mother was, and how she came to die in 
that forlornness, were questions that often pressed on Eppie’ s 
mind. Her knowledge of Mrs. Winthrop, who was her near- 
est friend next to Silas, made her feel that a mother must be 
very precious ; and she had again and again asked Silas to tell 
her how her mother looked, whom she was like, and how he 
had found her against the furze-bush, led toward it by the lit- 
tle footsteps and the outstretched arms. The furze-bush was 
there still ; and this afternoon, when Eppie came out with Silas 
into the sunshine, it was the first object that arrested her eyes 
and thoughts. 

“ Father, ” she said, in a tone of gentle gravity, which some- 
times came like a sadder, slower cadence across her playful- 
ness, “ we shall take the furze-bush into the garden ; it’ll come 
into the corner, and just against it I’ll put snowdrops and cro- 
cuses, ’cause Aaron says they won’t die out, but ’ll always get 
more and more.” 

“ Ah, child, ” said Silas, always ready to talk when he had 
his pipe in his hand, apparently enjoying the pauses more than 
the puffs, “ it wouldn’t do to leave out the furze-bush ; and 
there’s nothing prettier, to my thinking, when it’s yallow with 
flowers. But it’s just come into my head what we’re to do for 
a fence — mayhap Aaron can help us to a thought ; but a fence 
we must have, else the donkeys and things ’ull come and 
trample everything down. And fencing’s hard to be got at, 
by what I can make out.” 

“Oh, I’ll tell you, daddy,” said Eppie, clasping her hands 
suddenly, after a minute’s thought. “ There’s lots o’ loose 
stones about, some of ’em not big, and we might lay ’em atop 
of one another, and make a wall. You and me could carry 
the smallest, and Aaron ’ud carry the rest — I know he would.” 

“ Eh, my precious un, ” said Silas, “ there isn’t enough 
stones to go all round ; and as for you carrying, why, wi’ y 
little arms you couldn’t carry a stone no bigger than ? 


152 


SILAS MARNER. 


You’re dillicate made, my dear,” he added, with a tender in- 
tonation — “that’s what Mrs. Winthrop says.” 

“Oh, I’m stronger than you think, daddy,” said Eppie; 
“and if there wasn’t stones enough to go all round, why, 
they’ll go part o’ the way, and then it ’ll be easier to get 
sticks and things for the rest. See here, round the big pit, 
what a many stones ! ” 

She skipped forward to the pit, meaning to lift one of the 
stones and exhibit her strength, but she started back in sur- 
prise. 

“0, father, just come and look here,” she exclaimed — 
“ come and see how the water’s gone down since yesterday. 
Why, yesterday the pit was ever so full! ” 

“ Well, to be sure,” said Silas, coming to her side. “ Why, 
that’s the draining they’ve begun on, since harvest, i’ Mr. 
Osgood’s fields, I reckon. The foreman said to me the other 
day, when I passed by ’ em, ‘ Master Marner, ’ he said, ‘ I 
shouldn’t wonder if we lay your bit o’ waste as dry as a bone.’ 
It was Mr. Godfrey Cass, he said, had gone into the draining : 
he’d been taking these fields o’ Mr. Osgood.” 

“How odd it ’ll seem to have the old pit dried up! ” said 
Eppie, turning away, and stooping to lift rather a large stone. 
“See, daddy, I can carry this quite well,” she said, going 
along with much energy for a few steps, but presently letting 
it fall. 

“Ah, you’re fine and strong, aren’t you?j” said Silas, while 
Eppie shook her aching arms and laughed. “ Come, come, let 
us go and sit down on the bank against the stile there, and 
have no more lifting. You might hurt yourself, child. You’d 
need have somebody to work for you — and my arm isn’t over- 
strong. ” 

Silas uttered the last sentence slowly, as if it implied more 
than met the ear; and Eppie, when they sat down on the 
bank, nestled close to his side, and, taking hold caressingly of 
the arm that was not over-strong, held it on her lap. while Si- 
las puffed again dutifully at the pipe, which occupied his other 
arm. An ash in the hedgerow behind made a fretted screen 

'm the sun, and threw happy playful shadows all about 


SILAS MARNER. 


153 


“ Father,” said Eppie, very gently, after they had been sit- 
ting in silence a little while, “ if I was to be married, ought I 
to be married with my mother’s ring?” 

Silas gave an almost imperceptible start, though the ques- 
tion fell in with the under-current of thought in his own mind, 
and then said, in a subdued tone, “ Why, Eppie, have you 
been a- thinking on it?” 

“Only this last week, father,” said Eppie, ingenuously, 
“ since Aaron talked to me about it. ” 

“ And what did he say ? ” said Silas, still in the same sub- 
dued way, as if he were anxious lest he should fall into the 
slightest tone that was not for Eppie’ s good. 

“ He said he should like to be married, -because he was 
a-going in four and twenty, and had got a deal of gardening 
work, now Mr. Mott’s given up; and he goes twice a week 
regular to Mr. Cass’s, and once to Mr. Osgood’s, and they’re 
going to take him on at the Rectory.” 

“And who is it as he’s wanting to marry?” said Silas, with 
rather a sad smile. 

“Why, me, to be sure, daddy,” said Eppie, with dimpling 
laughter, kissing her father’s cheek; “as if he’d want to mar- 
ry anybody else ! ” 

“And you mean to have him, do you?” said Silas. 

“Yes, some time,” said Eppie, “I don’t know when. 
Everybody’s married some time, Aaron says. But I told him 
that wasn’t true: for, I said, look at father — he’s never been 
married. ” 

“No, child,” said Silas, “ your father was a lone man till 
you was sent to him.” 

“But you’ll never be lone again, father,” said Eppie, ten- 
derly. “ That was what Aaron said — ‘ I could never think o’ 
taking you away from Master Marner, Eppie.’ And I said, 
‘ It ’ud be no use if you did, Aaron.’ And he wants us all to 
live together, so as you needn’t work a bit, father, only what’s 
for your own pleasure ; and he’ d be as good as a son to you — 
that was what he said.” 

“And should you like that, Eppie?” said Silas, looking at 

her. 

“I shouldn’t mind it, father,” said Eppie, quite simply. 


154 


SILAS MARNER. 


“ And I should like things to be so as you needn’ t work much. 
But if it wasn’t for that, I’d sooner things didn’t change. 
I’m very happy : I like Aaron to be fond of me, and come and 
see us often, and behave pretty to you — he always does behave 
pretty to you, doesn’t he, father? ” 

“Yes, child, nobody could behave better,” said Silas, em- 
phatically. “He’s his mother’s lad.” 

“But X don’t want any change,” said Eppie. “I should 
like to go on for a long, long while, just as we are. Only 
Aaron does want a change; and he made me cry a bit — only 
a bit — because he said I didn’t care for him, for if I cared for 
him I should want us to be married, as he did.” 

“Eh, my blessed child,” said Silas, laying down his pipe as 
if it were useless to pretend to smoke any longer, “you’re o’er 
young to be married. We’ll ask Mrs. Winthrop — we’ll ask 
Aaron’s mother what she thinks: if there’s a right thing to 
do, she’ll come at it. But there’s this to be thought on, Ep- 
pie : things will change, whether we like it or no ; things won’t 
go on for a long while just as they are and no difference. I 
shall get older and helplesser, and be a burden on j t ou, belike, 
if I don’t go away from you altogether. Not as I mean you’d 
think me a burden — I know you wouldn’t — but it ’ud be hard 
upon you; and when I look for’ard to that, I like to think as 
you’d have somebody else besides me — somebody young and 
strong, as ’ll outlast your own life, and take care on you to 
the end.” Silas paused, and, resting his wrists on his knees, 
lifted his hands up and down meditatively as he looked on the 
ground. 

“Then, would you like me to be married, father?” said 
Eppie, with a little trembling in her voice. 

“I’ll not be the man to say no, Eppie,” said Silas, emphat- 
ically; “but we’ll ask your godmother. She’ll wish the 
right thing by you and her son too.” 

“ There they come, then, ” said Eppie. “ Let us go and meet 
’em. Oh, the pipe! won’t you have it lit again, father? ” said 
Eppie, lifting that medicinal appliance from the ground. 

“Nay, child,” said Silas, “I’ve done enough for to-day. I 
think, mayhap, a little of it does me more good than so much 
at once.” 


SILAS MARNER. 


155 


CHAPTER XVII. 

While Silas and Eppie were seated on the bank discoursing 
in the fleckered shade of the ash-tree, Miss Priscilla Lamme- 
ter was resisting her sister’s arguments that it would be bet- 
ter to take tea at the Red House, and let her father have a 
long nap, than drive home to the Warrens so soon after dinner. 
The family party (of four only) were seated round the table 
in the dark wainscoted parlor, with the Sunday dessert before 
them, of fresh filberts, apples, and pears, duly ornamented 
with leaves by Nancy’s own hand before the bells had rung for 
church. 

A great change has come over the dark wainscoted parlor 
since we saw it in Godfrey’s bachelor days, and under the 
wifeless reign of the old Squire. Now all is polish, on which 
no yesterday’s dust is ever allowed to rest, from the yard’s 
width of oaken boards round the carpet, to the old Squire’s 
gun and whips and walking-sticks, ranged on the stag’s antlers 
above the mantelpiece. All other signs of sporting and out- 
door occupation Nancy has removed to another room ; but she 
has brought into the Red House the habit of filial reverence, 
and preserves sacredly in a place of honor these relics of her 
husband’s departed father. The tankards are on the side- 
table still, but the bossed silver is undimmed by handling, and 
there are no dregs to send forth unpleasant suggestions : the 
only prevailing scent is of the lavender and rose leaves that 
fill the vases of Derbyshire spar. All is purity and order in 
this once dreary room, for, fifteen years ago, it was entered by 
a new presiding spirit. 

“Now, father,” said Nancy, “is there any call for you to 
go home to tea? Mayn’t you just as well stay with us? — 
such a beautiful evening as it’s likely to be.” 

The old gentleman had been talking with Godfrey about the 
increasing poor-rate and the ruinous times, and had not heard 
the dialogue between his daughters. 

“ My dear, you must ask Priscilla, ” he said, in the once 


156 


SILAS MARKER. 


firm voice, now become rather broken. “ She manages me and 
the farm too. ” 

“And reason good as I should manage you, father,” said 
Priscilla, “else you’d be giving yourself your death with 
rheumatism. And as for the farm, if anything turns out 
wrong, as it can’t but do in these times, there’s nothing kills 
a man so soon as having nobody to find fault with but himself. 
It’s a deal the best way o’ being master, to let somebody else 
do the ordering, and keep the blaming in your own hands. 
It ’ud save many a man a stroke, 1 believe.” 

“ Well, well, my dear,” said her father, with a quiet laugh, 
“I didn’t say you don’t manage for everybody’s good.” 

“Then manage so as you may stay tea, Priscilla,” said 
Nancy, putting her hand on her sister’s arm affectionately. 
“Come, now; and we’ll go round the garden while father has 
his nap.” 

“My dear child, he’ll have a beautiful nap in the gig, for I 
•shall drive. And as for staying tea, I can’t hear of it; for 
there’s this dairymaid, now she knows she’s to be married, 
turned Michaelmas, she’d as lief pour the new milk into the 
pig-trough as into the pans. That’s the way with ’em all : it’s 
as if they thought the world ’ud be new-made because they’re 
to be married. So come and let me put my bonnet on, and 
there’ll be time for us to walk round the garden while the 
horse is being put in. ” 

When the sisters were treading the neatly swept garden- 
walks, between the bright turf that contrasted pleasantly with 
the dark cones and arches and wall-like hedges of yew, Pris- 
cilla said, — 

“I’m as glad as anything at your husband’s making that 
exchange o’ land with cousin Osgood, and beginning the dairy- 
ing. It’s a thousand pities you didn’t do it before; for it’ll 
give you something to fill your mind. There’s nothing like a 
dairy if f folks want a bit o’ worrit to make the days pass. 
Por as for rubbing furniture, when you can once see. your face 
in a table there’s nothing else to look for; but there’s always 
something fresh with the dairy ; for even in the depths o’ 
winter there’s some pleasure in conquering the butter, and 
making it come whether or no. My dear, ” added Priscilla, 


SILAS MARKER. 


157 


pressing her sister’s hand affectionately as they walked side 
by side, “you’ll never be low when you’ve got a dairy.” 

“Ah, Priscilla,” said Nancy, returning the pressure with a 
grateful glance of her clear eyes, “but it won’t make up to 
Godfrey : a dairy’ s not so much to a man. And it’ s only 
what he cares for that ever makes me low. I’ m contented 
with the blessings we have, if he could be contented.” 

“It drives me past patience,” said Priscilla, impetuously, 
“that way o’ the men — always wanting and wanting, and 
never easy with what they’ve got: they can’t sit comfortable 
in their chairs when they’ve neither ache nor pain, but either 
they must stick a pipe in their mouths, to make ’em better 
than well, or else they must be swallowing something strong, 
though they’re forced to make haste before the next meal 
comes in. But joyful be it spoken, our father was never that 
sort o’ man. And if it had pleased God to make you ugly, 
like me, so as the men wouldn’t ha’ run after you, we might 
have kept to our own family, and had nothing to do with folks 
as have got uneasy blood in their veins.” 

“ Oh, don’t say so, Priscilla,” said Nancy, repenting that she 
had called forth this outburst ; “ nobody has any occasion to 
find fault with Godfrey. It’s natural he should *be disap- 
pointed at not having any children : every man likes to have 
somebody to work for and lay by for, and he always counted 
so on making a fuss with ’em when they were little. There’s 
many another man ’ud hanker more than he does. He’s the 
best of husbands.” 

“Oh, I know,” said Priscilla, smiling sarcastically, “I 
know the way o’ wives ; they set one on to abuse their hus- 
bands, and then they turn round on one and praise ’em as if 
they wanted to sell ’em. But father’ll be waiting for me; we 
must turn now.” 

The large gig with the steady old gray was at the front 
door, and Mr. Lammeter was already on the stone steps, pass- 
ing the time in recalling to Godfrey what very fine points 
Speckle had when his master used to ride him. 

“ I always would have a good horse,* you know, ” said the old 
gentleman, not liking that spirited time to be quite effaced 
from the memory of his juniors. 


158 


SILAS MARKER. 


“Mind you bring Nancy to the Warrens before the week’s 
out, Mr. Cass,” was Priscilla’s parting injunction, as she took 
the reins, and shook them gently, by way of friendly incite- 
ment to Speckle. 

“ I shall just take a turn to the fields against the Stone-pits, 
Nancy, and look at the draining,” said Godfrey. 

“You’ll be in again by tea-time, dear?” 

“ Oh, yes, I shall be back in an hour. ” 

It was Godfrey’s custom on a Sunday afternoon to do a lit- 
tle contemplative farming in a leisurely walk. Nancy seldom 
accompanied him ; for the women of her generation — unless, 
like Priscilla, they took to outdoor management — were not 
given to much walking beyond their own house and garden, 
finding sufficient exercise in domestic duties. So, when Pris- 
cilla was not with her, she usually sat with Mant’s Bible be- 
fore her, and after following the text with her eyes for a little 
while, she would gradually permit them to wander as her 
thoughts had already insisted on wandering. 

But Nancy’s Sunday thoughts were rarely quite out of keep- 
ing with the devout and reverential intention implied by the 
book spread open before her. She was not theologically in- 
structed enough to discern very clearly the relation between 
the sacred documents of the past which she opened without 
method, and her own obscure, simple life ; but the spirit of 
rectitude, and the sense of responsibility for the effect of her 
conduct on others, which were strong elements in Nancy’s 
character, had made it a habit with her to scrutinize her past 
feelings and actions with self-questioning solicitude. Her 
mind not being courted by a great variety of subjects, she 
filled the vacant moments by living inwardly, again and again, 
through all her remembered experiences, especially through 
the fifteen years of her married time, in which her life and 
its significance had been doubled. She recalled the small de- 
tails, the words, tones, and looks, in the critical scenes which 
had opened a new epoch for her by giving her a deeper insight 
into the relations and trials of life, or which had called on her 
for some little effort of forbearance, or of painful adherence 
to an imagined or real duty — asking herself continually 
whether she had been in any respect blamable. This exces- 


SILAS MARNEE. 


159 


sive rumination and self-questioning is perhaps a morbid habit 
inevitable to a mind of much moral sensibility when shut out 
from its due share of outward activity and of practical claims 
on its affections — inevitable to a noble-hearted, childless wo- 
man when her lot is narrow. “ I can do so little — have I 
done it all well?” is the perpetually recurring thought; and 
there are no voices calling her away from that soliloquy, no 
peremptory demands to divert energy from vain regret or su- 
perfluous scruple. 

There was one main thread of painful experience in Nancy’s 
married life, and on it hung certain deeply felt scenes, which 
were the oftenest revived in retrospect. The short dialogue 
with Priscilla in the garden had determined the current of 
retrospect in that frequent direction this particular Sunday 
afternoon. The first wandering of her thought from the text, 
which she still attempted dutifully to follow with her eyes and 
silent lips, was into an imaginary enlargement of the defence 
she had set up for her husband against Priscilla’s implied 
blame. The vindication of the loved object is the best balm 
affection can find for its wounds: — “A man must have so 
much on his mind, ” is the belief by which a wife often sup- 
ports a cheerful face under rough answers and unfeeling 
words. And Nancy’s deepest wounds had all come from the 
perception that the absence of children from their hearth was 
dwelt on in her husband’s mind as a privation to which he 
could not reconcile himself. 

Yet sweet Nancy might have been expected to feel still 
more keenly the denial of a blessing to which she had looked 
forward with all the varied expectations and preparations, sol- 
emn and prettily trivial, which fill the mind of a loving woman 
when she expects to become a mother. Was there not a 
drawer filled with the neat work of her hands, all unworn and 
untouched, just as she had arranged it there fourteen years 
ago — just, but for one little dress, which had been made the 
burial-dress? But under this immediate personal trial Nancy 
was so firmly unmurmuring that years ago she had suddenly 
renounced the habit of visiting this drawer, lest she should in 
this way be cherishing a longing for what was not given. 

Perhaps it was this very severity toward any indulgence of 


160 


SILAS MARKER. 


what she held to be sinful regret in herself that made her 
shrink from applying her own standard to her husband. “ It 
is very different — it is much worse for a man to be disap- 
pointed in that way : a woman can always be satisfied with 
devoting herself to her husband, but a man wants something 
that will make him look forward more — and sitting by the fire 
is so much duller to him than to a woman.” And always, 
when Nancy reached this point in her meditations — trying, 
with predetermined sympathy, to see everything as Godfrey 
saw it — there came a renewal of self- questioning. Had she 
done everything in her power to lighten Godfrey’s privation? 
Had she really been right in the resistance which had cost her 
so much pain six years ago, and again four years ago — the 
resistance to her husband’s wish that they should adopt a 
child? Adoption was more remote from the ideas and habits 
of that time than of our own; still Nancy had her opinion on 
it. It was as necessary to her mind to have an opinion on all 
topics, not exclusively masculine, that had come under her 
notice, as for her to have a precisely marked place for every 
article of her personal property : and her opinions were always 
principles to be unwaveringly acted on. They were firm, not 
because of their basis, but because she held them with a tenac- 
ity inseparable from her mental action. On all the duties and 
proprieties of life, from filial behavior to the arrangements of 
the evening toilet, pretty Nancy Lammeter, by the time she 
was three and twenty, had her unalterable little code, and had 
formed every one of her habits in strict accordance with that 
code. She carried these decided judgments within her in the 
most unobtrusive way : they rooted themselves in her mind, 
and grew there as quietly as grass. Years ago, we know, she 
insisted on dressing like Priscilla, because “ it was right for 
sisters to dress alike,” and because “she would do what was 
right if she wore a gown dyed with cheese-coloring.” That 
was a trivial but typical instance of the mode in which Nancy’s 
life was regulated. 

It was one of those rigid principles, and no petty egoistic 
feeling, which had been the ground of Nancy’s difficult resist- 
ance to her husband’s wish. To adopt a child, because chil- 
dren of your own had been denied you, was to try and choose 


SILAS MARNER. 


161 


your lot in spite of Providence : the adopted child, she was 
convinced, would never turn out well, and would be a curse to 
those who had wilfully and rebelliously sought what it was 
clear that, for some high reason, they were better without. 
When you saw a thing was not meant to be, said Nancy, it 
was a bounden duty to leave off so much as wishing for it. 
And so far, perhaps, the wisest of men could scarcely make 
more than a verbal improvement in her principle. But the 
conditions under which she held it apparent that a thing was 
not meant to be depended on a more peculiar mode of think- 
ing. She would have given up making a purchase at a partic- 
ular place if, on three successive times, rain, or sonle other 
cause of Heaven’s sending, had formed an obstacle; and she 
would have anticipated a broken limb or other heavy misfor- 
tune to any one who persisted in spite of such indications. 

“ But why should you think the child would turn out ill? ” 
said Godfrey, in his remonstrances. “ She has thriven as 
well as child can do with the weaver ; and he adopted her. 
There isn’t such a pretty little girl anywhere else in the par- 
ish, or one fitter for the station we could give her. Where 
can be the likelihood of her being a curse to anybody ? ” 

“ Yes, my dear Godfrey,” said Nancy, who was sitting with 
her hands tightly clasped together, and with yearning, regret- 
ful affection in her eyes. “ The child may not turn out ill 
with the weaver. But, then, he didn’t go to seek her, as we 
should be doing. It will be wrong : I feel sure it will. Don’t 
you remember what that lady we met at the Royston Baths 
told us about the child her sister adopted? That was the only 
adopting I ever heard of : and the child was transported when 
it was twenty-three. Dear Godfrey, don’t ask me to do what 
I know is wrong: I should never be happy again. I know it’s 
very hard for you — it’s easier for me — but it’s the will of 
Providence.” 

It might seem singular that Nancy— with her religious the- 
ory pieced together out of narrow social traditions, fragments 
of church doctrine imperfectly understood, and girlish reason- 
ings on her small experience — should have arrived by herself 
at a way of thinking so nearly akin to that of many devout 
people whose beliefs are held in the shape of a system quite 
11 


162 


SILAS MARNER. 


remote from her knowledge : singular, if we did not know that 
human beliefs, like all other natural growths, elude the bar- 
riers of system. 

Godfrey had from the first specified Eppie, then about 
twelve years old, as a child suitable for them to adopt. It 
had never occurred to him that Silas would rather part with 
his life than with Eppie. Surely the weaver would wish the 
best to the child he had taken so much trouble with, and 
would be glad that such good fortune should happen to her : 
she would always be very grateful to him, and he would be 
well provided for to the end of his life — provided fo'r as the 
excellent part he had done by the child deserved. Was it not 
an appropriate thing for people in a higher station to take a 
charge off the hands of a man in a lower? It seemed an emi- 
nently appropriate thing to Godfrey, for reasons that were 
known only to himself ; and, by a common fallacy, he.imagined 
the measure would be easy because he had private motives for 
desiring it. This was rather a coarse mode of estimating Si- 
las’s relation to Eppie; but we must remember that many of 
the impressions which Godfrey was likely to gather concern- 
ing the laboring people around him would favor the idea that 
deep affections can hardly go along with callous palms and 
scant means ; and he had not had the opportunity, even if he 
had had the power, of entering intimately into all that was 
exceptional in the weaver’s experience. It was only the want 
of adequate knowledge that could have made it possible for 
Godfrey deliberately to entertain an unfeeling project: his 
natural kindness had outlived that blighting time of cruel 
wishes, and Nancy’s praise of him as a husband was not 
founded entirely on a wilful illusion. 

“I was right,” she said to herself, when she had recalled 
all their scenes of discussion — “ I feel I was right to say him 
nay, though it hurt me more than anything; but how good 
Godfrey has been about it! Many men would have been very 
angry with me for standing out against their wishes ; and they 
might have thrown out that they’d had ill-luck in marrying 
me; but Godfrey has never been the man to say me an unkind 
word. It’s only what he can’t hide: everything seems so 
blank to him, I know ; and the land — what a difference it ’ ud 


SILAS MARNER. 


163 


make to him, when he goes to see after things, if he’d chil- 
dren growing up that he was doing it all fori But I won’t 
murmur; and perhaps if he’d married a woman who’d have 
had children, she’d have vexed him in other ways.” 

This -possibility was Nancy’s chief comfort; and, to give it 
greater strength, she labored to make it impossible that any 
other wife should have had more perfect tenderness. She had 
been forced to vex him by that one denial. Godfrey was not 
insensible to her loving effort, and did Nancy no injustice as 
to the motives of her obstinacy. It was impossible to have 
lived with her fifteen years and not be aware that an unselfish 
clinging to the right, and a sincerity clear as the flower-born 
dew, yrere her main characteristics ; indeed, Godfrey felt this 
so strongly that his own more wavering nature, too averse to 
facing difficulty to be unvaryingly simple and truthful, was 
kept in a certain awe of this gentle wife who watched his looks 
'with a yearning to obey them. It seemed to him impossible 
that he should ever confess to her the truth about Eppie : she 
would never recover from the repulsion the story of his earlier 
marriage would create, told to her now, after that long con- 
cealment. And the child, too, he thought, must become an 
object of repulsion: the very sight of her would be painful. 
The shock to Nancy’s mingled pride and ignorance of the 
world’s evil might even be too much for her delicate frame. 
Since he had married her with that secret on his heart, he 
must keep it there to the last. Whatever else he did, he could 
not make an irreparable breach between himself and this long- 
loved wife. 

Meanwhile, why could he not make up his mind to the ab- 
sence of children from a hearth brightened by such a wife? 
Why did his mind fly uneasily to that void, as if it were the 
sole reason why life was not thoroughly joyous to him? I 
suppose it is the way with all men and women who reach mid- 
dle age without the clear perception that life never can be 
thoroughly joyous : under the vague dulness of the gray hours, 
dissatisfaction seeks a definite object, and finds it in the pri- 
vation of an untried good. Dissatisfaction seated musingly on 
a childless hearth thinks with envy of the father whose return 
is greeted by young voices — seated, fit the meal where the lit- 


164 


SILAS MARKER. 


tie heads rise one above another like nursery -plants, it sees a 
black care hovering behind every one of them, and thinks the 
impulses by which men abandon freedom, and seek for ties, 
are surely nothing but a brief madness. In Godfrey’s case 
there were further reasons why his thoughts should be contin- 
ually solicited by this one point in his lot: his conscience, 
never thoroughly easy about Eppie, now gave his childless 
home the aspect of a retribution ; and as the time passed on, 
under Nancy’s refusal to adopt her, any retrieval of his error 
became more and more difficult. 

On this Sunday afternoon it was already four years since 
there had been any allusion to the subject between them, and 
Nancy supposed that it was forever buried. 

“I wonder if he’ll mind it less or more as he gets older,” 
she thought ; “ I’m afraid more. Aged people feel the miss of 
children : what would father do without Priscilla? And if I 
die, Godfrey will be very lonely — not holding together with 
his brothers much. But I won’t be over-anxious, and trying 
to make things out beforehand : I must do my best for the 
present.” 

With that last thought Nancy roused herself from her rev- 
ery, and turned her eyes again toward the forsaken page. It 
had been forsaken longer than she imagined, for she was pres- 
ently surprised by the appearance of the servant with the tea- 
things. It was, in fact, a little before the usual time for tea 5 
but Jane had her reasons. 

“ Is your master come into the yard, Jane? ” 

“No’m, he isn’t,” said Jane, with a slight emphasis, of 
which, however, her mistress took no notice. 

“I don’t know whether you’ve seen ’em, ’m,” continued 
Jane, after a pause, “but there’s folks making haste all one 
way, afore the front window. I doubt something’s happened. 
There’s niver a man to be seen i’ the yard, else I’d send and 
see. I’ve been up into the top attic, but there’s no seeing 
anything for trees. I hope nobody’ s hurt, that’ s ail. ” 

“ Oh, no, I dare say there’s nothing much the matter,” said 
Nancy. “It’s perhaps Mr. Snell’s bull got out again, as he 
did before.” 

“I wish he mayn’t gore anybody then, that’s all,” said 


SILAS MARNER. 


165 


Jane, not altogether despising a hypothesis which covered a 
few imaginary calamities. 

“ That girl is always terrifying me,” thought Nancy; “I 
wish Godfrey would come in.” 

She went to the front window and looked as far as she could 
see along the road, with an uneasiness which she felt to be 
childish, for there were now no such signs of excitement as 
Jane had spoken of, and Godfrey would not be likely to return 
by the village road, but by the fields. She continued to stand, 
however, looking at the placid churchyard with the long shad- 
ows of the gravestones across the bright green hillocks, and at 
the glowing autumn colors of the Rectory trees beyond. Be- 
fore such calm external beauty the presence of a vague fear is 
Inore distinctly felt — like a raven flapping its slow wing across 
the sunny air. Nancy wished more and more that Godfrey 
would come in. 


CHAPTER XVIII. 

Some one opened the door at the other end of the room, and 
Nancy felt that it was her husband. She turned from the 
window with gladness in her eyes, for the wife’s chief dread 
was stilled. 

“Dear, I’m so thankful you’re come,” she said, going tow- 
ard him. “ I began to get ...” 

She paused abruptly, for Godfrey was laying down his hat 
with trembling hands, and turned toward her with a pale face 
and a strange unanswering glance, as if he saw her indeed, but 
saw her as part of a scene invisible to herself. She laid her 
hand on his arm, not daring to speak again ; but he left the 
touch unnoticed, and threw himself into his chair. 

Jane was already at the door with the hissing urn. “Tell 
her to keep away, will you? ” said Godfrey ; and when the 
door was closed again he exerted himself to speak more dis- 
tinctly. 

“ Sit down, Nancy — there,” he said, pointing to a chair op- 
posite him. “ I came back as soon as I could, to hinder any- 


166 


SILAS MARNER. 


body’ s telling you but me. I’ve had a great shock — but I care 
most about the shock it’ll be to you.” 

“It isn’t father and Priscilla?” said Nancy, with quivering 
lips, clasping her hands together tightly on her lap. 

“No, it’s nobody living,” said Godfrey, unequal to the con- 
siderate skill with which he would have wished to make his 
revelation. “It’s Dunstan — my brother Dunstan, that we 
lost sight of sixteen years ago. We’ve found him — found his 
body — his skeleton.” 

The deep dread Godfrey’s look had created in Nancy made 
her feel these words a relief. She sat in comparative calmness 
to hear what else he had to tell. He went on : — 

“ The Stone-pit has gone dry suddenly — from the draining, 
I suppose; and there he lies — has lain for sixteen years," 
wedged between two great stones. There’s his watch and 
seals, and there’s my gold-handled hunting-whip, with my 
name on : he took it away, without my knowing, the day he 
went hunting on Wildfire, the last time he was seen.” 

Godfrey paused : it was not so easy to say what came next. 
“Do you think he drowned himself ?” said Nancy, almost 
wondering that her husband should be so deeply shaken by 
what had happened all those years ago to an unloved brother, 
of whom worse things had been augured. 

“No, he fell in,” said Godfrey, in a low but distinct voice, 
as if he felt some deep meaning in the fact. Presently he 
added : “ Dunstan was the man that robbed Silas Marner. ” 

The blood rushed to Nancy’s face and neck at this surprise 
and shame, for she had been bred up to regard even a distant 
kinship with crime as a dishonor. 

“ O Godfrey ! ” she said, with compassion in her tone, for 
she had immediately reflected that the dishonor must be felt 
still more keenly by her husband. 

“There was the money in the pit,” he continued — “all the 
weaver’ s money . Everything’s been gathered up, and they’re 
taking the skeleton to the Rainbow. But I came back to tell 
you: there was no hindering it; you must know.” 

He was silent, looking on the ground for two long minutes. 
Nancy would have said some words of comfort under this dis- 
grace, but she refrained, from an instinctive sense that there 


SILAS MARKER. 


167 


was something behind — that Godfrey had something else to 
tell her. Presently he lifted his eyes to her face, and kept 
them fixed on her, as he said, — 

“ Everything comes to light, Nancy, sooner or later. When 
God Almighty wills it, our secrets are found out. Fve lived 
with a secret on my mind, but I’ll keep it from you no longer. 
I wouldn’t have you know it by somebody else, and not by me 
— I wouldn’ t have you find it out after I’m dead. I’ll tell 
you now. It’s been ( I will’ and 1 I won’t’ with me all my 
life — I’ll make sure of myself now.” 

Nancy’s utmost dread had returned. The eyes of the hus- 
band and wife met with awe in them, as at a crisis which sus- 
pended affection. 

“ Nancy,” said Godfrey, slowly, “when I married you, I 
hid something from you — something I ought to have told you. 
That woman Marner found dead in the snow — Eppie’ s mother 
— that wretched woman — was my wife: Eppie is my child.” 

He paused, dreading the effect of his confession. But 
Nancy sat quite still, only that her eyes dropped and ceased 
to meet his. She was pale and quiet as a meditative statue, 
clasping her hands on her lap. 

“You’ll never think the same of me again,” said Godfrey, 
after a little while, with some tremor in his voice. 

She was silent. 

“I oughtn’t to have left the child unowned: I oughtn’t to 
have kept it from you. But I couldn’t bear to give you 
up, Nancy. I was led away into marrying her — I suffered 
for it. ” 

Still Nancy was silent, looking down; and he almost ex- 
pected that she would presently get up and say she would go 
to her father’s. How could she have any mercy for faults 
that must seem so black to her, with her simple severe notions? 

But at last she lifted up her eyes to his again and spoke. 
There was no indignation in her voice — only deep regret. 

“ Godfrey, if you had but told me this six years ago, we 
could have done some of our duty by the child. Do you think 
I’d have refused to take her in, if I’d known she was yours? ” 

At that moment Godfrey felt all the bitterness of an error 
that was not simply futile, but had defeated its own end. He 


168 


SILAS MARKER. 


had not measured this wife with whom he had lived so long. 
But she spoke again, with more agitation. 

‘‘And — 0, Godfrey — if we’d had her from the first, if you’d 
taken to her as you ought, she’d have loved me for her mother 
— and you’d have been happier with me: I could better have 
bore my little baby dying, and our life might have been more 
like what we used to think it ’ud be.” 

The tears fell, and Nancy ceased to speak. 

“But you wouldn’t have married me then, Nancy, if I’d 
told you,” said Godfrey, urged, in the bitterness of his self- 
reproach, to prove to himself that his conduct had not been 
utter folly. “You may think you would now, but you 
wouldn’t then. With your pride and your father’s, you’d 
have hated having anything to do with me after the talk there’ d 
have been.” 

“I can’t say what I should have done about that, Godfrey. 
I should never have married anybody else. But I wasn’t 
worth doing wrong for — nothing is in this world. Nothing 
is so good as it seems beforehand — not even our marrying 
wasn’t, you see.” There was a faint sad smile on Nancy’s 
face as she said the last words. 

“I’m a worse man than you thought I was, Nancy,” said 
Godfrey, rather tremulously. “Can you forgive me ever?” 

“The wrong to me is but little, Godfrey: you’ve made it 
up to me — you’ve been good to me for fifteen years. It’s an- 
other you did the wrong to ; and I doubt it can never be all 
made up for.” 

“But we can take Eppie now,” said Godfrey. “I won’t 
mind the world knowing at last. I’ll be plain and open for 
the rest o’ my life.” 

“It’ll be different coming to us, now she’s grown up,” said 
Nancy, shaking her head sadly. “But it’s your duty to 
acknowledge her and provide for her; and I’ll do my part by 
her, and pray to God Almighty to make her love me.” 

“Then we’ll go together to Silas Marner’s this very night, 
as soon as everything’s quiet at the Stone-pits ” 


SILAS MARNFR. 


169 


CHAPTER XIX. 

Between eight and nine o’clock that evening, Eppie and 
Silas were seated alone in the cottage. After the great ex- 
citement the weaver had undergone from the events of the 
afternoon, he had felt a longing for this quietude, and had 
even begged Mrs. Winthrop and Aaron, who had naturally 
lingered behind every one else, to leave him alone with his 
child. The excitement had not passed away; it had only 
reached that stage when the keenness of the susceptibility 
makes external stimulus intolerable — when there is no sense 
of weariness, but rather an intensity of inward life, under 
which sleep is an impossibility. Any one who has watched 
such movements in other men remembers the brightness of the 
eyes and the strange definiteness that comes over coarse fea- 
tures from that transient influence. It is as if a new fineness 
of ear for all spiritual voices had sent wonder-working vibra- 
tions through the heavy mortal frame — as if “ beauty born of 
murmuring sound ” had passed into the face of the listener. 

Silas’s face showed that sort of transfiguration, as he sat in 
his arm-chair and looked at Eppie. She had drawn her own 
chair toward his knees, and leaned forward, holding both his 
hands, while she looked up at him. On the table near them, 
lit by a candle, lay the recovered gold — the old long-loved 
gold, ranged in orderly heaps, as Silas used to range it in the 
days when it was his only joy. He had been telling her how 
he used to count it every night, and how his soul was utterly 
desolate till she was sent to him. 

“At first, I’d a sort o’ feeling come across me now and 
then,” he was saying in a subdued tone, “as if you might be 
changed into the gold again; for sometimes, turn my head 
which way I would, I seemed to see the gold ; and I thought 
I should be glad if I could feel it, and find it was come back. 
But that didn’t last long. After a bit, I should have thought 
it was a curse come again, if it had drove you from me, for I’d 
got to feel the need o’ your looks and your voice and the touch 
o’ your little fingers. You didn’t know then, Eppie, when 


170 


SILAS MARNER. 


you were such a little un — you didn’t know what your old 
father Silas felt for you. ” 

“ But I know now, father,” said Eppie. “ If it hadn’t been 
for you, they’d have taken me to the workhouse, and there’ d 
have been nobody to love me.” 

“ Eh, my precious child, the blessing was mine. If you 
hadn’t been sent to save me, I should ha’ gone to the grave in 
my misery. The money was taken away from me in time; 
and you see it’s been kept — kept till it was wanted for you. 
It’s wonderful — our life is wonderful.” 

Silas sat in silence a few minutes, looking at the money. 
“It takes no hold of me now,” he said, ponderingly — “the 
money doesn’t. I wonder if it ever could again — I doubt it 
might, if I lost you, Eppie. I might come to think I was 
forsaken again, and lose the feeling that God was good to me.” 

At that moment there was a knocking at the door ; and Ep- 
pie was obliged to rise without answering Silas. Beautiful 
she looked, with the tenderness of gathering tears in her eyes 
and a slight flush on her cheeks, as she stepped to open the 
door. The flush deepened when she saw Mr. and Mrs. God- 
frey Cass. She made her little rustic courtesy, and held the 
door wide for them to enter. 

“We’re disturbing you very late, my dear,” said Mrs. Cass, 
taking Eppie’s hand, and looking in her face with an expres- 
sion of anxious interest and admiration. Nancy herself was 
pale and tremulous. 

Eppie, after placing chairs for Mr. and Mrs. Cass, went to 
stand against Silas, opposite to them. 

“Well, Marner,” said Godfrey, trying to speak with per- 
fect firmness, “ it’s a great comfort to me to see you with your 
money again, that you’ve been deprived of so many years. 
It was one of my family did you the wrong — the more grief to 
me — and I feel bound to make up to you for it in every way. 
Whatever I can do for you will be nothing but paying a debt, 
even if I looked no further than the robbery. But there are 
other things I’m beholden — shall be beholden to you for, 
Marner.” 

Godfrey checked himself. It had been agreed between him 
and his wife that the subject of his fatherhood should be ap- 


SILAS MARKER. 


171 


proached very carefully, and that, if possible, the disclosure 
should be reserved for the future, so that it might be made to 
Eppie gradually. Nancy had urged this, because she felt 
strongly the painful light in which Eppie must inevitably see 
the relation between her father and mother. 

Silas, always ill at ease when he w r as being spoken to by 
“ betters,” such as Mr. Cass — tall, powerful, florid men, seen 
chiefly on horseback — answered with some constraint, — 

“ Sir, Fve a deal to thank you for a’ready. As for the rob- 
bery, I count it no loss to me. And if I did, you couldn’t 
help it; you aren’t answerable for it.” 

“ You may look at it in that way, Marner, but I never can ; 
and I hope you’ll let me act according to my own feeling of 
what’s just. I know you’re easily contented: you’ve been a 
hard-working man all your life.” 

“Yes, sir, yes,” said Marner, meditatively. “I should ha’ 
been bad off without my work : it was what I held by when 
everything else was gone from me.” 

“Ah,” said Godfrey, applying Marner’ s words simply to 
his bodily wants, “ it was a good trade for you in this country, 
because there’s been a great deal of linen- weaving to be done. 
But you’re getting rather past such close work, Marner: it’s 
time you laid by and had some rest. You look a good deal 
pulled down, though you’re not an old man, are you?” 

“Fifty-five, as near as I can say, sir,” said Silas. 

“ Oh, why, you may live thirty years longer — look at old 
Macey ! And that money on the table, after all, is but little. 
It won’t go far either way — whether it’s, put out to interest, or 
you were to live on it as long as it would last: it wouldn’t go 
far if you’d nobody to keep but yourself, and you’ve had two 
to keep for a good many years now.” 

“ Eh, sir, ” said Silas, unaffected by anything Godfrey was 
saying, “I’m in no fear o’ want. We shall do very well — 
Eppie and me ’ull do well enough. There’s few working-folks 
have got so much laid by as that. I don’t know what it is to 
gentlefolks, but I look upon it as a deal — almost too much. 
And as for us, it’s little we want.” 

“Only the garden, father,” said Eppie, blushing up to the 
ears the moment after. 


172 


SILAS MARKER. 


“ You love a garden, do you, my dear? ” said Nancy, think- 
ing that this turn in the point of view might help her hus- 
band. “ We should agree in that : I give a deal of time to the 
garden. ” 

“ Ah, there’s plenty of gardening at the Red House,” said 
Godfrey, surprised at the difficulty he found in approaching a 
proposition which had seemed so easy to him in the distance. 
“ You’ve done a good part by Eppie, Marner, for sixteen 
years. It ’ud be a great comfort to you to see her well pro- 
vided for, wouldn’t it? She looks blooming and healthy, but 
not fit for any hardships : she doesn’t look like a strapping 
girl come of working parents. You’d like to see her taken 
care of by those who can leave her well off, and make a lady 
of her ; she’ s more fit for it than for a rough life, such as she 
might come to have in a few years’ time.” 

A slight flush came over Marner’ s face, and disappeared, 
like a passing gleam. Eppie was simply wondering Mr. Cass 
should talk so about things that seemed to have nothing to do 
with reality, but Silas was hurt and uneasy. 

‘‘I don’t take your meaning, sir,” he answered, not having 
words at command to express the mingled feelings with which 
he had heard Mr. Cass’s words. 

“Well, my meaning is this, Marner,” said Godfrey, deter- 
mined to come to the point. “ Mrs. Cass and I, you know, 
have no children — nobody to be the better for our good home 
and everything else we have — more than enough for ourselves. 
And we should like to have somebody in the place of a daugh- 
ter to us — we should like to have Eppie, and treat her in every 
way as our own child. It ’ud be a great comfort to you in 
your old age, I hope, to see her fortune made in that way, 
after you’ve been at the trouble of bringing her up so well. 
And it’s right you should have every reward for that. And 
Eppie, I’m sure, will always love you and be grateful to you : 
she’d come and see you very often, and we should all be on 
the lookout to do everything we could toward making you 
comfortable. ” 

A plain man, like Godfrey Cass, speaking under some em- 
barrassment, necessarily blunders on words that are coarser 
than his intentions, and that are likely to fall gratingly on 


SILAS MARNER. 


173 


susceptible feelings. While he had been speaking, Eppie had 
quietly passed her arm behind Silas’s head, and let her hand 
rest against it caressingly : she felt him trembling violently. 
He was silent for some moments when Mr. Cass had ended — 
powerless under the conflict of emotions, all alike painful. 
Eppie’ s heart was swelling at the sense that her father was in 
distress; and she was just going to lean down and speak to 
him, when one struggling dread at last gained the mastery 
over every other in Silas, and he said, faintly, — 

“Eppie, my child, speak. I won’t stand in your way. 
Thank Mr. and Mrs. Cass.” 

Eppie took her hand from her father’s head, and came for- 
ward a step. Her cheeks were flushed, but not with shyness 
this time : the sense that her father was in doubt and suffering 
banished that sort of self-consciousness. She dropped a cour- 
tesy, first to Mrs. Cass and then to Mr. Cass, and said, — 

“Thank you, ma’am — thank you, sir. But I can’t leave 
my father, nor own anybody nearer than him. And I don’t 
want to be a lady — thank you all the same ” (here Eppie 
dropped another courtesy). “I couldn’t give up the folks 
I’ve been used to.” 

Eppie’ s lip began to tremble a little at the last words. She 
retreated to her father’s chair again, and held him round the 
neck: while Silas, with a subdued sob, put up his hand to 
grasp hers. 

The tears were in Nancy’s eyes, but her sympathy with 
Eppie was, naturally, divided with distress on her husband’s 
account. She dared not speak, wondering what was going on 
in her husband’s mind. 

Godfrey felt an irritation inevitable to almost all of us when 
we encounter an unexpected obstacle. He had been full of his 
own penitence and resolution to retrieve his error as far as the 
time was left to him; he was possessed with all-important 
feelings, that were to lead to a predetermined course of action 
which he had fixed on as the right, and he was not prepared 
to enter with lively appreciation into other people’s feelings 
counteracting his virtuous resolves. The agitation with which 
he spoke again was not quite unmixed with anger. 

“But I’ve a claim on you, Eppie — the strongest of all 


174 


SILAS MARKER. 


claims. It’s my duty, Marner, to own Eppie as my child, and 
provide for her. She’s my own child: her mother was my 
wife. I’ve a natural claim on her that must stand before every 
other. ” 

Eppie had given a violent start, and turned quite pale. 
Silas, on the contrary, who had been relieved by Eppie’ s an- 
swer from the dread lest his mind should be in opposition to 
hers, felt the spirit of resistance in him set free, not without 
a touch of parental fierceness. “Then, sir,” he answered, 
with an accent of bitterness that had been silent in him since 
the memorable day when his youthful hope had perished — 
“then, sir, why didn’t you say so sixteen year ago, and claim 
her before I’d come to love her, i’ stead o’ coming to take her 
from me now, when you might as well take the heart out o’ 
my body? God gave her to me because you turned your back 
upon her, and He looks upon her as mine: you’ve no right to 
her ! When a man turns a blessing from his door, it falls to 
them as take it in.” 

“ I know that, Marner. I was wrong. I’ve repented of my 
conduct in that matter,” said Godfrey, who could not help 
feeling the edge of Silas’s words. 

“I’m glad to hear it, sir,” said Marner, with gathering ex- 
citement; “but repentance doesn’t alter what’s been going on 
for sixteen year. Your coming now and saying 4 I’m her 
father ’ doesn’t alter the feelings inside us. It’s me she’ s been 
calling her father ever since she could say the word.” 

“ But I think you might look at the thing more reasonably, 
Marner,” said Godfrey, unexpectedly awed by the weaver’s 
direct truth-speaking. “It isn’t as if she was to be taken 
quite away from you, so that you’d never see her again. 
She’ll be very near you, and come to see you very often. 
She’ll feel just the same toward you.” 

“ Just the same?” said Marner, more bitterly than ever. 
“How’ll she feel just the same for me as she does now, when 
we eat o’ the same bit, and drink o’ the same cup, and think 
o’ the same things from one day’s end to another? Just the 
same? that’s idle talk. You’d cut us i’ two.” 

Godfrey, unqualified by experience to discern the pregnancy 
of Marner’ s simple words, felt rather angry again. It seemed 


SILAS MARNER. 


175 


to him that the weaver was very selfish (a judgment readily 
passed by those who have never tested their own power of sac- 
rifice) to oppose what was undoubtedly for Eppie’s welfare; 
and he felt himself called upon, for her sake, to assert his 
authority. 

“I should have thought, Marner,” he said, severely — “ I 
should have thought your affection for Eppie would make you 
rejoice in what was for her good, even if it did call upon you 
to give up something. You ought to remember your own 
life’s uncertain, and she’s at an age now when her lot may 
soon be fixed in a way very different from what it would be in 
her father’s home: she may marry some low working-man, 
and then, whatever I might do for her, I couldn’t make her 
well off. You’re putting yourself in the way of her wel- 
fare; and though I’m sorry to hurt you after what you’ve 
done, and what I’ve left undone, I feel now it’s my duty to 
insist on taking care of my own daughter. I want to do 
my duty.” 

It would be difficult to say whether it were Silas or Eppie 
that was more deeply stirred by this last speech of Godfrey’s. 
Thought had been very busy in Eppie as she listened to the 
contest between her old long-loved father and this new un- 
familiar father who had suddenly come to fill the place of that 
black featureless shadow which had held the ring and placed 
it on her mother’s finger. Her imagination had darted back- 
ward in conjectures, and forward in previsions, of what this 
revealed fatherhood implied; and there were words in God- 
frey’s last speech which helped to make the previsions espe- 
cially definite. Not that these thoughts, either of past or fu- 
ture, determined her resolution — that was determined by the 
feelings which vibrated to every word Silas had uttered ; but 
they raised, even apart from these feelings, a repulsion toward 
the offered lot and the newly revealed father. 

Silas, on the other hand, was again stricken in conscience, 
and alarmed lest Godfrey’s accusation should be true — lest he 
should be raising his own will as an obstacle to Eppie’s good. 
For many moments he was mute, struggling for the self-con- 
quest necessary to the uttering of the difficult words. They 
came out tremulously. 


176 


SILAS MARNER. 


“I'll’ say no more. Let it be as yon will. Speak to the 
child. I’ll hinder nothing.” 

Even Nancy, with all the acute sensibility of her own affec- 
tions, shared her husband’s view, that Marner was not justifi- 
able in his wish to retain Eppie, after her real father had 
avowed himself. She felt that it was a very hard trial for 
the poor weaver, but her code allowed no question that a father 
by blood must have a claim above that of any foster-father. 
Besides, Nancy, used all her life to plenteous circumstances 
and the privileges of “respectability,” could not enter into the 
pleasures which early nurture and habit connect with all the 
little aims and efforts of the poor who are born poor : to her 
mind, Eppie, in being restored to her birthright, was entering 
on a too long withheld but unquestionable good. Hence she 
heard Silas’s last words with relief, and thought, as Godfrey 
did, that their wish was achieved. 

“ Eppie, my dear, ” said Godfrey, looking at his daughter, 
not without some embarrassment, under the sense that she 
was old enough to judge him, “it’ll always be our wish that 
you should show your love and gratitude to one who’s been a 
father to you so many years, and we shall want to help you to 
make him comfortable in every way. But we hope you’ll 
come to love us as well ; and though I haven’t been what a 
father should ha’ been to you all these years, I wish to do the 
utmost in my power for you for the rest of my life, and pro- 
vide for you as my only child. And you’ll have the best of 
mothers in my wife — that’ll be a blessing you haven’t known 
since you were old enough to know it.” 

“My dear, you’ll be a treasure to me,” said Nancy, in her 
gentle voice. “ We shall want for nothing when we have our 
daughter.” 

Eppie did not come forward and courtesy, as she had done 
before. She held Silas’s hand in hers, and grasped it firmly — 
it was a weaver’s hand, with a palm and finger-tips that were 
sensitive to such pressure — while she spoke with colder deci- 
sion than before. 

“ Thank you, ma’am — thank you, sir, for your offers — 
they’ re very great, and far above my wish. For I should have 
no delight i’ life any more if I was forced to go away from my 


SILAS MARNER. 


177 


father, and knew he was sitting at home, a-thinking of me 
and feeling lone. We’ve been used to be happy together 
every day, and I can’t think o’ no happiness without him. 
And he says he’d nobody i’ the world till I was sent to him, 
and he’d have nothing when I was gone. And he’s took care 
of me and loved me from the first, and I’ll cleave to him as 
long as he lives, and nobody shall ever come between him 
and me.” 

“ But you must make sure, Eppie, ” said Silas, in a low voice 
! — “you must make sure as you won’t ever be sorry, because 
you’ve made your choice to stay among poor folks, and with 
poor clothes and things, when you might ha’ had everything 
o’ the best.” 

His sensitiveness on this point had increased as he listened 
to Eppie’ s words of faithful affection. 

“I can never be sorry, father,” said Eppie. “I shouldn’t 
know what to think on or to wish for with fine things about 
me, as I haven’t been used to. And it ’ud be poor work for 
me to put on things, and ride in a gig, and sit in a place at 
church, as ’ud make them as I’m fond of think me unfitting 
company for ’em. What could I care for them? ” 

Haney looked at Godfrey with a pained questioning glance. 
But his eyes were fixed on the floor, where he was moving the 
end of his stick, as if he were pondering on something ab- 
sently. She thought there was a word which might perhaps 
come better from her lips than from his. 

“What you say is natural, my dear child — it’s natural you 
should cling to those who’ve brought you up,” she said, mildly ; 
“but there’s a duty you owe to your lawful father. There’s 
perhaps something to be given up on more sides than one. 
When your father opens his home to you, I think it’s right 
! you shouldn’t turn your back on it.” 

“I can’t feel as I’ve got any father but one,” said Eppie, 
impetuously, while the tears gathered. “ I’ve always thought 
of a little home where he’d sit i’ the corner, and I should fend 
and do everything for him : I can’t think o’ no other home. 

} I wasn’t brought up to be a lady, and I can’t turn my mind 
to it. I like the working-folks, and their victuals, and their 
ways. And,” she ended passionately, while the tears fell, 
12 


178 


SILAS MARNER. 


“I’m promised to marry a working-man, as ’ll live with father, 
and help me to take care of him.” 

Godfrey looked up at Nancy with a flushed face and smart- 
ing dilated eyes. This frustration of a purpose toward which 
he had set out under the exalted consciousness that he was 
about to compensate in some degree for the greatest demerit of 
his life, made him feel the air of the room stifling. 

“Let us go,” he said, in an undertone. 

“ We won’t talk of this any longer now,” said Nancy, rising. 
“We’re your welLwishers, my dear — and yours too, Marner. 
We shall come and see you again. It’s getting late now.” 

In this way she covered her husband’s abrupt departure, for 
Godfrey had gone straight to the door, unable to say more. 


CHAPTER XX. 

Nancy and Godfrey walked home under the starlight in si- 
lence. When they entered the oaken parlor, Godfrey threw 
himself into his chair, while Nancy laid down her bonnet and 
shawl, and stood on the hearth near her husband, unwilling to 
leave him even for a few minutes, and yet fearing to utter any 
word lest it might jar on his feeling. At last Godfrey turned 
his head toward her, and their eyes met, dwelling in that 
meeting without any movement on either side. That quiet 
mutual gaze of a trusting husband and wife is like the first 
moment of rest or refuge from a great weariness or a great 
danger — not to be interfered with by speech or action which 
would distract the sensations from the fresh enjoyment of 
repose. 

But presently he put out his hand, and as Nancy placed hers 
within it, he drew her toward him, and said, — 

“ That’s ended! ” 

She bent to kiss him, and then said, as she stood by his 
side, “Yes, I’m afraid we must give up the hope of having 
her for a daughter. It wouldn’t be right to want to force her 
to come to us against her will. We can’t alter her bringing 
up and what’ s come of it. ” 


SILAS MARKER. 


179 


“No,” said Godfrey, with a keen decisiveness of tone, in 
contrast with his usually careless and unemphatic speech — 
“there’s debts we can’t pay like money debts, by paying extra 
for the years that have slipped by. While I’ve been putting 
off and putting off, the trees have been growing — it’s too late 
now. Marner was in the right in what he said about a man’s 
turning away a blessing from his door : it falls to somebody 
else. I wanted to pass for childless once, Nancy — I shall 
pass for childless now against my wish.” 

Nancy did not speak immediately, but after a little while 
she asked — “You won’t make it known, then, about Eppie’s 
being your daughter? ” 

“No: where would be the good to anybody? — only harm. 
I must do what I can for her in the state of life she chooses. 
I must see who it is she’s thinking of marrying.” 

“If it won’t do any good to make the thing known,” said 
Nancy, who thought she might now allow herself the relief of 
entertaining a feeling which she had tried to silence before, “I 
should be very thankful for father and Priscilla never to be 
troubled with knowing what was done in the past, more than 
about Dunsey : it can’t be helped, their knowing that.” 

“ I shall put it in my will — I think I shall put it in my will. 
I shouldn’t like to leave anything to be found out, like this 
about Dunsey,” said Godfrey, meditatively. “ But I can’t see 
anything but difficulties that ’ud come from telling it now. I 
must do what I can to make her happy in her own way. I’ve 
a notion,” he added, after a moment’s pause, “it’s Aaron 
Winthrop she meant she was engaged to. I remember seeing 
him with her and Marner going away from church.” 

“ Well, he’s very sober and industrious,” said Nancy, trying 
to view the matter as cheerfully as possible. 

Godfrey fell into thoughtfulness again. Presently he 
looked up at Nancy sorrowfully, and said, — 

“She’s a very pretty, nice girl, isn’t she, Nancy?” 

“Yes, dear; and with just your hair and eyes: I wondered 
it had never struck me before.” 

“ I think she took a dislike to me at the thought of my be- 
ing her father: I could see a change in her manner after that.” 

“ She couldn’t bear to think of not looking on Marner as her 


180 


SILAS MARNER. 


father,” said Nancy, not wishing to confirm her husband’s 
painful impression. 

“ She thinks I did wrong by her mother as well as by her. 
She thinks me worse than I am. But she must think it: she 
can never know all. It’s part of my punishment, Nancy, for 
my daughter to dislike me. I should never have got into that 
trouble if I’d been true to you — if I hadn’t been a fool. I’d 
no right to expect anything but evil could come of that mar- 
riage — and when I shirked doing a father’s part too.” 

Nancy was silent: her spirit of rectitude would not let her 
try to soften the edge of what she felt to be a just compunc- 
tion. He spoke again after a little while, but the tone was 
rather changed : there was tenderness mingled with the pre- 
vious self-reproach. 

“And I got you , Nancy, in spite of all; and yet I’ve been 
grumbling and uneasy because I hadn’t something else — as if 
I deserved it.” 

“You’ve never been wanting to me, Godfrey,” said Nancy, 
with quiet sincerity. “ My only trouble would be gone if you 
resigned yourself to the lot that’s been given us.” 

“Well, perhaps it isn’t too late to mend a bit there. 
Though it is too late to mend some things, say what they 
wifi.” 


CHAPTER XXI. 

The next morning, when Silas and Eppie were seated at 
their breakfast, he said to her, — 

“ Eppie, there’s a thing I’ve had on my mind to do this two 
year, and now the money’s been brought back to us, we can 
do it. I’ ve been turning it over and over in the night, and 
I think we’ll set out to-morrow, while the fine days last. 
We’ll leave the house and everything for your godmother to 
take care on, and we’ll make a little bundle o’ things and set 
out. ” 

“ Where to go, daddy ? ” said Eppie, in much surprise. 

“ To my old country — to the town where I was born — up 
Lantern Yard. I want to see Mr. Paston. the minister : some- 


SILAS MARKER. 


181 


thing may ha’ come out to make ’em know I was innicent o’ 
the robbery. And Mr. Paston was a man with a deal o’ light 
— I want to speak to him about the drawing o’ the lots. And 
I should like to talk to him about the religion o’ this country- 
side, for I partly think he doesn’t know on it.” 

Eppie was very joyful, for there was the prospect not only 
of wonder and delight at seeing a strange country, but also of 
coming back to tell Aaron all about it. Aaron was so much 
wiser than she was about most things — it would be rather 
pleasant to have this little advantage over him. Mrs. Win- 
throp, though possessed with a dim fear of dangers attendant 
on so long a journey, and requiring many assurances that it 
would not take them out of the region of carriers’ carts and 
slow wagons, was nevertheless well pleased that Silas should 
revisit his own country, and find out if he had been cleared 
from that false accusation. 

“You’d be easier in your mind for the rest o’ your life, 
Master Marner,” said Dolly — “that you would. And if 
there’s any light to be got up the Yard as you talk on, we’ve 
need of it i’ this world, and I’d be glad on it myself, if you 
could bring it back.” 

So on the fourth day from that time, Silas and Eppie, in 
their Sunday clothes, with a small bundle tied in a blue linen 
handkerchief, were making their way through the streets of a 
great manufacturing town. Silas, bewildered by the changes 
thirty years had brought over his native place, had stopped 
several persons in succession to ask them the name of this 
town, that he might be sure he was not under a mistake about it. 

“Ask for Lantern Yard, father — ask this gentleman with 
the tassels on his shoulders a-standing at the shop door; he 
isn’t in a hurry like the rest,” said Eppie, in some distress at 
her father’s bewilderment, and ill at ease, besides, amidst the 
noise, the movement, and the multitude of strange indifferent 
faces. 

“Eh, my child, he won’t know anything about it,” said 
Silas j “ gentlefolks didn’t ever go up the Yard. But happen 
somebody can tell me which is the way to Prison Street, where 
the jail is. I know the way out o’ that as if I’d seen it yes- 
terday. ” 


182 


SILAS MARNER. 


With some difficulty, after many turnings and new inqui- 
ries, they reached Prison Street ; and the grim walls of the 
jail, the first object that answered to any image in Silas’s 
memory, cheered him with the certitude, which no assurance 
of the town’s name had hitherto given him, that he was in his 
native place. 

“Ah,” he said, drawing a long breath, “there’s the jail, 
Eppie; that’s just the same: I aren’t afraid now. It’s the 
third turning on the left hand from the jail doors — that’s the 
way we must go.” 

“ Oh, what a dark ugly place ! ” said Eppie. “ How it hides 
the sky! It’s worse than the Workhouse. I’m glad you 
don’t live in this town now, father. Is Lantern Yard like this 
street? ” 

“My precious child,” said Silas, smiling, “it isn’t a big 
street like this. I never was easy i’ this street myself, but I 
was fond o’ Lantern Yard. The shops here are all altered, I 
think — I can’t make ’em out; but I shall know the turning, 
because it’s the third. 

“ Here it is, ” he said, in a tone of satisfaction, as they came 
to a narrow alley. “ And then we must go to the left again, 
and then straight for’ard for a bit, up Shoe Lane : and then 
we shall be at the entry next to the o’erhanging window, 
where there’s the nick in the road for the water to run. Eh, 
1 can see it all.” 

“0 father, I’m like as if I was stifled,” said Eppie. “I 
couldn’t ha’ thought as any folks lived i’ this way, so close 
together. How pretty the Stone-pits ’ull look when we get 
back !” 

“ It looks comical to me, child, now — and smells bad. I 
can’t think as it usened to smell so.” 

Here and there a sallow, begrimed face looked out from a 
gloomy doorway at the strangers, and increased Eppie’ s un- 
easiness, so that it was a longed-for relief when they issued 
from the alleys into Shoe Lane, where there was a broader 
strip of sky. 

“ Dear heart ! ” said Silas, “ why, there’ s people coming out 
o’ the Yard as if they’d been to chapel at this time o’ day — 
a week-day noon! ” 


SILAS MARKER. 


183 


Suddenly he started and stood still with a look of distressed 
amazement that alarmed Eppie. They were before an open- 
ing in front of a large factory, from which men and women 
were streaming for their mid-day meal. 

“Father,” said Eppie, clasping his arm, “what’s the 
matter? ” 

But she had to speak again and again before Silas could 
answer her. 

“It’s gone, child,” he said, at last, in strong agitation — 
“Lantern Yard’s gone. It must ha’ been here, because here’s 
the house with the o’erhanging window — I know that — it’s 
just the same; but they’ve made this new opening; and see 
that big factory ! It’s all gone— chapel and all.” 

“ Come into that little brush-shop and sit down, father — 
they’ll let you sit down,” said Eppie, always on the watch 
lest one of her father’s strange attacks should come on. “ Per- 
haps the people can tell you all about it.” 

But neither from the brush-maker, who had come to Shoe 
Lane only ten years ago, when the factory was already built, 
nor from any other source within his reach, could Silas learn 
anything of the old Lantern Yard friends, or of Mr. Paston 
the minister. 

“The old place is all swep’ away,” Silas said to Dolly 
Winthrop on the night of his return — “the little graveyard 
and everything. The old home’s gone; I’ve no home but this 
now. I shall never know whether they got at the truth o’ the 
robbery, nor whether Mr. Paston could ha’ given me any light 
about the drawing o’ the lots. It’s dark to me, Mrs. Win- 
throp, that is; I doubt it’ll be dark to the last.” 

“Well, yes, Master Marner,” said Dolly, who sat with a 
placid listening face, now bordered by gray hairs ; “ I doubt 
it may. It’s the will o’ Them above as a many things should 
be dark to us; but there’s some things as I’ve never felt i’ the 
dark about, and they’re mostly what comes i’ the day’s work. 
You were hard done by that once, Master Marner, and it seems 
as you’ll never know the rights of it; but that doesn’t hinder 
there being a rights, Master Marner, for all it’s dear to you 
and me.” 

“Ho,” said Silas, “no; that doesn’t hinder. Since the 


184 


SILAS MARNER. 


time the child was sent to me and I’ve come to love her as 
myself, I’ve had light enough to trusten by; and now she 
says she’ll never leave me, I think I shall trusten till I die.” 


CONCLUSION. 

There was one time of the year which was held in Raveloe 
to be especially suitable for a wedding. It was when the great 
lilacs and laburnums in the old-fashioned gardens showed their 
golden and purple wealth above the lichen-tinted walls, and 
when there were calves still young enough to want bucketfuls 
of fragrant milk. People were not so busy then as they must 
become when the full cheese-making and the mowing had set 
in ; and besides, it was a time when a light bridal dress could 
be worn with comfort and seen to advantage. 

Happily the sunshine fell more warmly than usual on the 
lilac tufts the morning that Eppie was married, for her dress 
was a very light one. She had often thought, though with a 
feeling of renunciation, that the perfection of a wedding-dress 
would be a white cotton, with the tiniest pink sprig at wide 
intervals ; so that when Mrs. Godfrey Cass begged to provide 
one, and asked Eppie to choose what it should be, previous 
meditation had enabled her to give a decided answer at once. 

Seen at a little distance as she walked across the churchyard 
and down the village, she seemed to be attired in pure white, 
and her hair looked like the dash of gold on a lily. One hand 
was on her husband’ s arm, and with the other she clasped the 
hand of her father Silas. 

“You won’t be giving me away, father,” she had said be- 
fore they went to church; “you’ll only be taking Aaron to be 
a son to you. ” 

Dolly Winthrop walked behind with her husband ; and there 
ended the little bridal procession. 

There were many eyes to look at it, and Miss Priscilla Lam- 
meter was glad that she and her father had happened to drive 
up to the door of the Red House just in time to see this pretty 
sight. They had come to keep Nancy company to-day, be- 
cause Mr. Cass had had to go away to Lytherley, for special 


SILAS MARNER. 


185 


reasons. That seemed to be a pity, for otherwise he might 
have gone, as Mr. Crackenthorp and Mr. Osgood certainly 
would, to look on at the wedding-feast which he had ordered 
at the Rainbow, naturally feeling a great interest in the 
weaver who had been wronged by one of his own family. 

“ I could ha’ wished Nancy had had the luck to find a child 
like that and bring her up,” said Priscilla to her father, as 
they sat in the gig ; “ I should ha’ had something young to 
think of then, besides the lambs and the calves.” 

“ Yes, my dear, yes,” said Mr. Lammeter; “one feels that 
as one gets older. Things look dim to old folks: they’d need 
have some young eyes about ’em, to let ’em know the world’s 
the same as it used to be. ” 

Nancy came out now to welcome her father and sister; and 
the wedding group had passed on beyond the Red House to 
the humbler part of the village. 

Dolly Winthrop was the first to divine that old Mr. Macey, 
who had been set in his arm-chair outside his own door, would 
expect some special notice as they passed, since he was too old 
to be at the wedding-feast. 

“Mr. Macey’ s looking for a word from us,” said Dolly; 
“ he’ll be hurt if we pass him and say nothing — and him so 
racked with rheumatiz.” 

So they turned aside to shake hands with the old man. 
He had looked forward to the occasion, and had his premedi- 
tated speech. 

“Well, Master Marner,” he said, in a voice that quavered a 
good deal, u I’ve lived to see my words come true. I was the 
first to say there was no harm in you, though your looks 
might be again’ you; and I was the first to say you’d get your 
money back. And it’s nothing but rightful as you should. 
And I’d ha’ said the ‘Amens, ’ and willing, at the holy matri- 
mony ; but Tookey’ s done it a good while now, and I hope 
you’ll have none the worse luck.” 

In the open yard before the Rainbow the party of guests 
were already assembled, though it was still nearly an hour 
before the appointed feast-time. But by this means they 
could not only enjoy the show advent of their pleasure; they 
had also ample leisure to talk of Silas Marner’ s strange his- 


186 


SILAS MARKER. 


tory, and arrive by due degrees at the conclusion that he had 
brought a blessing on himself by acting like a father to a lone 
motherless child. Even the farrier did not negative this sen- 
timent : on the contrary, he took it up as peculiarly his own, 
and invited any hardy person present to contradict him. But 
he met with no contradiction ; and all differences among the 
company were merged in a general agreement with Mr. Snell’s 
sentiment, that when a man had deserved his good luck, it 
was the part of his neighbors to wish him joy. 

As the bridal group approached, a hearty cheer was raised 
in the Rainbow yard; and Ben Winthrop, whose jokes had 
retained their acceptable flavor, found it agreeable to turn in 
there and receive congratulations ; not requiring the proposed 
interval of quiet at the Stone-pits before joining the company. 

Eppie had a larger garden than she had ever expected there 
now ; and in other ways there had been alterations at the ex- 
pense of Mr. Cass, the landlord, to suit Silas’s larger family. 
For he and Eppie had declared that they would rather stay 
at the Stone-pits than go to any new home. The garden was 
fenced with stones on two sides, but in front there was an 
open fence, through which the flowers shone with answering 
gladness, as the four united people came within sight of them. 

“ 0 father, ” said Eppie, “ what a pretty home ours is ! I 
think nobody could be happier than we are. ” 


END OF SILAS MARNER. 


NOTES. 


[References are made to the page and paragraph, numbering from the top.] 

CHAPTER I. LANTERN YARD: THE FIRST EPOCH IN 
SILAS’S LIFE. 

The chapter presents a careful method of development : first, there is 
a general introduction, dealing with the day in which the story is set, and 
the peculiar class of wandering men who might be seen about the country- 
side ; then follows a specific instance of these weavers, introducing the 
hero of the story. All this is in turn introductory, for the story then 
reverts to the days antedating Marner’s life at Raveloe that it may explain 
the circumstances leading up to the conditions existent at the opening of 
the actual story, that of “the weaver of Raveloe.” 

The student should note the generally simple, untutored condition — 
mental, social, and religious, of the rustics. Does the language used 
by the writer contribute in any way to the general effect of natural 
simplicity *? 

The characters of William Dane and Sarah are made clear and distinct. 
Is this done by detailed description, or by narration of actions ? How is 
it in the case of Silas himself ? 

Page 7, par. 1. “ Rickets.” A disease of childhood, characterized by 
softening of the bones, especially of the spine, and consequent deformity. 

Page 8, par. 1. “Tithes.” A tithe is a tax of a tenth part of the 
yearly proceeds arising from lands and from the personal industry of the 
inhabitants, for the support of the clergy and the church. 

“ War times.” The war between France and England, lasting from 
1793 practically until the battle of Waterloo in 1815. 

“ Whitsun.” The week which began with Whitsun-day, the seventh 
Sunday after Easter, commemorative of the descent of the Holy Spirit on 
the day of Pentecost, is called Whitsun-tide. 

Par. 2. “The Rainbow.” It was the custom to name the old taverns 
after various objects, animals, men, points of natural scenery ; e.g ., in 
Dickens we read of the Blue Lion, the Great White Horse, the Marquis 
of Granby, etc. 


187 


188 


NOTES. 


Page 9, par. 1. “More by token.” From the very fact. 

“Clerk.” In the English Church a layman who leads in reading the 
responses. 

“ To partly take away.” Notice the split infinitive, an inelegant form. 
Compare the expression “thoroughly to imagine ” in the middle of first 
paragraph in Chap. II. 

“ Throw him on the parish.” Make him dependent upon the parish 
for support. 

Page 10, par. 1. “Tale.” The amount, especially as numbered by 
pieces. 

Par. 2. “ Metamorphosis.” A change from one condition to another. 

“Chance of distinguishing himself by speech,” etc. In reference to 
some of the dissenting or independent congregations, who did not con- 
form with the Established Church of England. 

Page 11, par. 2. “ David and Jonathan.” See 1 Sam. xviii.-xx. 

Page 12, par. 2. “ Cataleptic fit.” A nervous condition marked by 
sudden suspension of consciousness, and muscular rigidity. 

Page 13. “Vestry.” In the English Church the robing-room where 
the vestments are kept ; in dissenting chapels, as here, a chapel or Sunday- 
school room. 

“Three pound five.” Between fifteen and sixteen dollars. 

Page 14, par. 8. “Drawing lots.” Probably in this case and in 
similar instances in imitation of the scriptural drawing of lots, of which 
there are many examples, as a method of determining innocence or guilt. 


CHAPTER II. THE SOLITARY WEAVER : THE SECOND 
EPOCH IN SILAS’S LIFE. 

This chapter presents further details of Silas’s early life at Raveloe, 
still previous to the time when he is introduced as an established func- 
tionary of the village. 

Observe how the element of miserliness creeps into his character ; it is 
a gradual, almost natural growth, rather than sudden and artificial because 
unreal. His past life contributes to his isolation and self-concentration, 
for his one opportunity of establishing something like fellowship with his 
neighbors turns upon his willingness to occupy a false position, — and this 
he is too honest to do. It is a little thing, then, that has much influence 
upon his course in life. George Eliot never neglects the little things ; 
they often in her work underlie great changes. 


NOTES. 


189 


The paragraph beginning “ Gradually the guineas, the crowns,” etc., 
page 21, presents an instance of the author’s proneness to halt the story 
while she discourses upon thoughts suggested by what has taken place. 

Page 16, par. 3. “Made various by learning.” Diversified in their 
interests. 

“Lethean.” According to ancient mythology, Lethe was the river 
of forgetfulness in the lower world, from which souls drank before pass- 
ing to Elysium, that they might forget all their sorrows. 

Page 17, par. 1. “Altar place.” The source of highest authority, 
from the altar’s being the place of greatest sanctity in the church. 

“ Amulet.” A charm worn by the superstitious as protection against 
witchcraft or harm in general. 

“These things.” Some of the characteristics of the dissenting bodies, 
as in the passage noted on page 10. 

Page 19, par. 1. “Guinea.” A unit used in England, although the 
coin is no longer issued : twenty-one shillings, or about five dollars. 

Page 22, par. 1. “Flock bed.” A bed stuffed with tufts of wool. 

“ King Alfred.” The famous Alfred the Great (a.d. 849-901), king of 
the West Saxons. 


CHAPTER III. THE BROTHERS. 

This chapter presents several elements for the student of George Eliot 
to notice. First, her method of transition from the general to the specific ; 
in this case, the picture of Raveloe society as a whole, then the squire- 
archy, then the Cass family, then the two brothers, and finally the scene 
between them that has its bearing on the thread of the story. Second, 
the delineation from within, supplementing the external description, 
exemplified in the careful sketching of Godfrey’s character and thoughts. 
Third, the accurate and realistic treatment of apparently insignificant 
details; e.g., Snuff’s actions and emotions. Fourth, the tendency to 
digress into thoughts suggested by the characters or the story ; e.g., pages 
32 and 33. 

The closing paragraph of Chap. II opens the way for Chap. Ill on quite 
a different topic, and the introductory sentence of the last paragraph on 
page 26 connects the chapter with what has preceded, and sets its time. 

Page 24, par. 3. “The large red house.” “The” adds much to the 
vividness. Try “ a ” and explain the flatness in the effect. 

“Landed parishioners.” Those parishioners, or members of the parish, 
who owned their own land. 


190 


NOTES. 


“Complained of the game.” In reference to the burdensome game- 
laws whereby the game of the landlord is protected even although it 
injure the tenant’s produce. 

Par. 4. “Fall of prices.*” At the close of the war, of which mention 
is made, prices fell on account of the English market’s being thrown open 
to foreign competition, and small landowners found the value of their 
land greatly reduced. 

“ Squire.” An abbreviation of “ esquire ” ; a landed proprietor of long 
standing, approaching in quality or estimation a lord of the manor. 

“Yeomen.” Originally, those who had free land of forty shillings 
yearly, being thereby qualified to vote, serve on juries, etc., as a free and 
lawful man ; hence, in modern popular usage, farmers, especially those 
who own and cultivate their own farms. 

Page 25, par. 1. “Orts.” Scraps or refuse. 

“Pillions.” A pillion is a pad on a horse’s back, behind the saddle, 
upon which a second person may ride ; formerly much used by women. 

“Chines.” A chine is a part or the whole of the backbone of an 
animal with the adjoining flesh or parts, for cooking. 

Page 26, par. 1. “Tankards.” Large drinking cups, sometimes with 
covers. 

“A year ago last Whitsuntide.” See note on page 8. 

Page 27 , par. 4. “Distrain.” To take and detain as security for a 
debt. 

Page 31, par. 7. “A hundred and twenty.” Nearly six hundred 
dollars. 

Page 32, par. 1. “Crooked sixpence.” A pocket-piece, carried for 
luck. 

Par. 4. “Rumination.” Reflection, mental “chewing the cud.” 

Page 35, par. 1. “Vicinage.” Neighborhood, vicinity. 

CHAPTER IV. THE ROBBERY. 

Note that in this chapter the individual threads of Chaps. I— III are 
gradually approximated. 

This chapter is an unimportant episode in the character-evolution of 
Silas Marner. His first idol had been his religious ties ; they had been 
sundered by the dastardly act of William Dane. His second idol had 
been gold ; his treasure is stolen. Upon these had rested the whole struc- 
ture of his life. If there is to be any further growth, it must be upon some 
other foundation. 


NOTES. 


191 


The student should notice that in this chapter every detail tends to em- 
phasize the absolute depravity of Dunstan’s character : the thought of 
swindling Marner out of his earnings by the enforced loan to Godfrey ; 
his determination to go on, rather than to return and reveal this new 
thought to Godfrey, simply for the delight of annoying his brother ; his 
unnecessary lying in the matter of the horse-trade ; his determination to 
ride to the hunt rather than to make the bargain certain by proceeding to 
Batherley ; his total lack of regret at Wildfire’s needless death ; his 
absorbing selfishness in his desire to escape notice on his return from 
home ; his disregard of Godfrey’s feelings when he should learn of Wild- 
fire’s accident ; his taking of Godfrey’s gold-headed whip without per- 
mission, and the reason for taking it ; the new idea of bullying the loan 
from Silas ; the thought of robbing him of his hoard, quickly taking form 
in action ; — all these incidents viewed in connection with the comments 
explaining Dunstan’s inner self, illustrate George Eliot’s careful and 
analytic method of character-exposition. Compare what we now 
know of Dunstan’s personality with what we know of his external 
appearance. Then contrast this result with a similar picture of Mr. 
Micawber, Mr. Pickwick, or some other famous Dickens creation. 

Page 35, par. 3. “ Cover.” Thicket or underbrush sheltering game. 

Page 36 , par. 5. “Hack.” A common horse. 

Par. 6. “At a fence.” Alt leaping a fence. 

Page 37, par. 3. “ Of the field.” All the others in the hunt. 

Page 38. “ Coppice.” A thicket of bushes, or a wood of small trees. 

Page 40. par. 2. “Kettle hanger.” The support upon which the 
kettle was suspended. 

“Jacks.” A device for turning the spit in roasting. 

Page 41. “Thatch.” The covering of the roof, made of straw or 
reeds, for shedding the water. 

“Treadles.” Foot-levers. 

CHAPTER V. DISCOVERY AND DESOLATION. 

< 

The student should notice how in this chapter George Eliot maintains 
unity of plot-structure. The opening connects it with Chap. IV, and the 
whole episode of Chap. V is the substance of what is foreshadowed at the 
close of Chap. II, and for which Chaps. Ill and IV pave the way. This 
chapter also illustrates unity in itself, all the parts being subordinated to 
one single idea, — the paralyzing effect that the robbery has upon Silas’s 
mind. 


192 


NOTES. 


Page 42, par. 2. “ Horn lantern.” A lantern whose sides were com- 
posed of translucent, thin pieces of horn. Note the old spelling ‘ ‘ lan- 
thorn,” from the mistaken idea that the etymology of the word was 
connected with this early form of the article itself. 

Page 46, par. 1. “ Poacher.” One who takes game unlawfully. 

CHAPTER VI. THE CIRCLE AT “THE RAINBOW.” 

This chapter presents one of those descriptive pictures of homely, rural 
life for which George Eliot is famous. This particular scene is often 
mentioned as among her best. Notice that although the chapter presents 
an apparent digression, yet it forms an integral part of the story in pav- 
ing the way for Silas’s introduction to the circle at the inn, whither he 
has set out at the close of the preceding chapter. 

Page 47, par. 2. “Fustian jackets.” Jackets of a coarse linen or 
cotton material, like velveteen or corduroy. 

“ Smock frocks.” A frock or blouse, resembling a shirt, worn over 
the other clothes. 

Page 48, par. 2. “Farrier.” One who combines the occupation of 
blacksmith with that of veterinary surgeon. 

Par. 6. “ Drenching of her.” Giving her medicine. 

Page 49, par. 7. “Key bugle.” A bugle having keys, and thus of 
considerable compass. 

Page 50, par. 4. “ Throstle.” The song thrush. 

Par.l. “Varmin.” Corrupt form for vermin. 

Page 51, par. 3. “Lights.” Lungs. 

Page 52, par. 4. “Summat.” Something. 

Page 53, par. 1. “Worreted.” Worried. 

Page 54, par. 4. “ Afore the Queen’s head went out on the shillings.” 
In reference to Queen Anne, whose head was, during her reign (1702- 
1714), stamped on the shilling. 

Page 56, par. 4. “Vallying.” Valuation. 

Par. 6. “Pike-staff.” A staff surmounted by a tip of iron. The old 
saying, “as plain as a pikestaff,” was perhaps originally a pun, the 
plainness of the pikestaff being lack of ornament rather than conspicu- 
ousness. 

Page 57, par. 2. “Crass.” Dense, stupid. 


NOTES. 


193 


CHAPTER VII. AN APPARITION AT “THE RAINBOW.” 

The significance of thh chapter, as far as Silas’s personality is con- 
cerned, may be found in the fact of his being again brought into contact 
with his fellow-men after an isolation of so many years. 

Page 57, par. 3. “Antennae.” The long appendages, or “ feelers,” 
on the heads of insects. 

Page 58, par. 1. “ Idea of a ghost.” Is this form correct ? 

Par. 8. “To lay.” To present. 

Page 59, par. 3. “ Surplice.” The loose white vestment with flowing 
sleeves, worn by the clergy of the English Church. 

Par. 6. This paragraph presents the core of the chapter, as far as Silas’s 
own personality is concerned. 

Par. 7. “Mushed.” Worn out, exhausted. 

Page 61, par. 5. “ Nolo episcopari.' 1 ' 1 “I do not wish to become 

bishop,” a protest that ambition is not an element in the willingness to 
receive the office, made by one about to be consecrated bishop in the 
Church. 


CHAPTER VIII. GODFREY’S DILEMMA. 

The function of this chapter may be viewed as twofold, — objective 
and subjective. Objectively, in the village search for the peddler we note 
George Eliot’s bubbling humor, and the continued picture of the village 
wiseacres. Subjectively, we are made more familiar with the peculiar 
character of Godfrey, his moral hesitation in facing what may be unpleas- 
ant, and his unwillingness to shoulder responsibility. 

Page 6 par. 1. “O’ King George’s making.” /.e., an official of the 
government. George III reigned 1760-1820, the longest reign previous 
to that of Victoria. 

Page 66, par. 1. “’sizes.” Assizes, the regular session of the court 
for trial of criminals by jury in the counties of England and Wales. 

Page 67, par. 8. “ Swinging price.” A large, immense price. 

CHAPTER IX. GODFREY AND THE SQUIRE. 

This chapter introduces the squire, of whom something has been 
learned indirectly, and develops further the character of Godfrey. The 
hereditary traits in the son should be noted. The chapter is generally 
subjective rather than objective in plot-development. 

Page 72, par. 3. “ To unstring.” To loosen the purse-strings. 


194 


NOTES. 


“Jack.” An automaton connected with certain clocks, striking the 
hell for the hours. Some readers may recall tlie “ quarter- jack ” that 
plays an important part in the opening of Chap. XVI of Hardy’s “Far 
from the Madding Crowd.” 

Page 73 , par. 4. “Collogue.” To confer secretly, with mischievous 
intent. 

“Entail.” An estate is said to be entailed when the inheritance of 
it is restricted by law to certain persons, and its sale by the owner is 
prohibited. 

Page 75, par. 4. “Shilly-shally.” Weak, irresolute. What is the 
derivation ? 

Page 77, par. 1. What characteristic of George Eliot is illustrated in 
this paragraph ? In what respect does it add to the story ? 

CHAPTER X. A NEIGHBORLY VISIT. 

This chapter not only serves to introduce a character of considerable 
importance in the subsequent life of Silas, but by an indirect and delicate 
touch, shows — in the episode of little Aaron — that the old weaver is 
well-disposed, after all, and far from insensible : he is thus amenable to 
the influences that are ultimately to work his salvation. 

Page 78, par. 1. “ Alibi.' 1 ' A form of defense by which the accused, 
in order to establish his innocence, undertakes to show that he was else- 
where when the crime was committed. Here the meaning is that Godfrey 
did not think of laying the crime at Dunstan’s door, for he believed his 
brother to have gone immediately after Wildfire’s death: 

“ Mural monument.” A family tablet set in the wall of the church. 

“Brawn.” The flesh of the boar or swine, especially when boiled, 
pickled, and pressed. 

Page 79, par. 1. “ Wall-eyed.” Having the iris of the eye light- 
colored or white ; also squinting. 

Page 80, par. 2. “ Mushed.” See note on page 59. 

Par. 3. “Pigs’ pettitoes.” Feet. 

Par. 4. “ Black puddings.” A skin or gut filled with seasoned minced 
meat, blood, or the like, and usually boiled or broiled ; a sort of large 
sausage. 

Page 81, par. 1. “Egoism.” Self-exaltation. Better Egotism. What 
is the exact distinction between the synonyms ? 

Par. 3. “ Yarbs.” Herbs. 

“ Does the cussing.” In the English Book of Common Prayer will be 


NOTES. 


195 


found a service of “ Commination, or Denouncing of God’s Anger and 
Judgements against Sinners,” set for use on Ash Wednesday and certain 
other occasions. After a sort of prefatory explanation of the rationale 
of the service follow the comminations, or threatenings, gathered from 
Deuteronomy xxvii. and other places in the Scriptures, each beginning, 
“ Cursed is he that . . . etc.” To each of them is the response “ Amen.” 
Hence Mr. Macey’s conception of the “cussings” in which he, as clerk, 
and the “ parson ” figured as the principal actors. 

“Ash Wednesday.” The first day of Lent, the fast of forty days pre- 
ceding Easter. 

Page 83, par. 3. “Great festivals.” Christmas, Easter, and Whit- 
sun-day, perhaps also Michaelmas. 

Par. 4. “Leeches.” Worm-like, blood-sucking creatures. 

Page 85, par. 7. “I. H. S.” Three Greek capitals, equivalent to I. E. S., 
the first three letters of the Greek word for Jesus, much used in ecclesiasti- 
cal decoration. Many fanciful but unauthoritative explanations are offered. 

Page 86, par. 4. “ Bakehus.” Bake-house ; a sort of public oven. 

Page 87, par. 4. “Chapel.” A place of worship not connected with 
the Established Church ; in this case, the particular dissenting denomi- 
nation to which Silas had belonged. 

Page 89 , par. 3. “Hark, the erol angels sing.” “Hark the herald 
angels sing.” An old and well-known Christmas hymn. 

Page 90, par. 4. “Athanasian Creed.” The creed named afterS. 
Athanasius to whom it was for some time attributed. The Athanasian 
Creed is accepted in the Roman, Greek, and English Church, but has 
been omitted in the Prayer Book of the American branch of the Anglican 
Church, leaving only the Apostles’ and the Nicene Creed. 

Page 91, par. 2. “ Walked the hospitals.” Attended the hospitals as 
a student, observing the methods of the surgeons and physicians. 

CHAPTER XI. THE DANCING PARTY. 

/ 

This chapter, like that dealing with the scene at the village inn, is an 
excellent type of George Eliot’s power of dealing with country scenes. 
It also introduces Miss Nancy, who is destined to play an important part 
in the story. Note that the author is not satisfied with leaving a merely 
external picture of the young lady ; the reader feels, at the end of the 
chapter, that he is already more or less acquainted with her personality. 
How is this accomplished ? 

Page 92, par. 8. “ Pillion.” See note on page 25. 


196 


NOTES. 


“ Joseph.” A long coat with cape, generally worn when on horseback, 
as here. 

Page 94, par. 3. “Front.” False hair. 

‘ ‘ Turban. ’ ’ Head-dress. 

Par. 4. “ Mob-cap.” Cap, or head-dress, with long ribbons to be tied 
together under the chin. 

Page 96, par. 2. “ Coiffure.” Method of arranging the hair. 

Page 97, par. 1. “ Profane.” Common, in contrast to sacred. 

“Sampler.” Piece of embroidery. Notice derivation. 

Par. 2. “Blowsy.” Flushed, ruddy. 

Par. 5. ‘ ‘ Feature. ’ ’ To resemble. 

Page 98, par. 1. “ Scrag.” A lean, thin piece, or end of meat. 

“Knuckle.” A knee-joint. 

Par. 7. “Mawkin.” Scarecrow. 

Page 99, par. 5. “ Ear-droppers.” Earrings with pendants. 

Page 102, par. 1. “ Pigtail.” Cue. In reference to the old-fashioned 
mode of dressing men’s hair. 

Page 106, par. 2. “Sir Roger de Coverley.” An old dance like the 
Virginia reel, supposed to be the original form of it. Named after the 
old squire in Addison’s Spectator. 

Page 107. par. 1. “Tithe-in-kind.” See note on page 8. Paid in 
produce instead of in money. 

Par. 3. “ Springe.” Active, spry. 

Page 108, par. 7. “Piert.” Lively. 

Page 109, par. 1. “Offal.” Cast-off. 

CHAPTER XII. THE GOLD RESTORED. 

The dramatic climax of the whole story. Silas’s gold is restored, — but 
in idealized form. His main interests, first centered in himself, then in 
his gold, now gather about the life of another. His care, his love, his 
life now become merged into self-sacrifice for another’s welfare. 

Several queries may well be considered in connection with this critical 
chapter : 

Is the combination of circumstances that culminate in the episode of 
Eppie’s coming to Silas natural or forced ? Explain, 

Is the narration of the dramatic climax characterized by simplicity or 
by ornateness of style ? 

Does this simplicity or ornateness heighten the effect ? Explain your 
answer. 


NOTES. 


197 


How does the author render it natural and probable that Silas shall be 
interested in the little stranger found at his fireside ? 

Page 113, par. 2. “ Hedgerow.” An orderly rank of shrubs or small 
Itrees, planted as a windbreak or fence or for ornament, 
p, “Furze-bush.” A spiny shrub. 

CHAPTER XIII. THE DEAD MOTHER. 

In this crisis of Godfrey’s life his absorbing love for self is manifest. 
Instead of traces of love for the dead wife is fear lest she be not dead ; 
instead of feeling pity for his child, he leaves her in the hands of a 
stranger that the secret of her parentage may not transpire ; rather than 
; reveal the truth to Nancy and rely for forgiveness upon her love, he will 
keep the secret, trust to his power over Dunstan in case of necessity ; will, 
in fact, sacrifice anything, any one, rather than cause himself additional 
anxiety. 

Page 123, par. 4. “ Eglantine.” The sweet-brier. 

Page 124, par. 1. “Mazed.” Confused, bewildered. 

CHAPTER XIV. NEW INTERESTS. 

Here is presented the contrast between the new interests of Marner’s 
life and the old ; the self-centering character of the one, the altruistic 
[ character of the other. This abstract idea is rendered specific and clear 
by the various illustrative episodes that carry along the story. Notice 
Imw the closing paragraph of the chapter is the sum of the whole matter. 

Page 127, par. 4. “Scrat.” Scratch. 

“Fend.” Provide. 

“Moithered.” Perplexed. 

Par. 6. “ Leeching.” See note on page 83. 

Page 128 , par. 6. “Gell.” Girl. 

; “ Ringing the pigs.” Putting rings in their noses. 

Page 129, par. 5. “ ’Noculation. ” Practically the same as vaccination. 

Page 133, par. 1. “Colly.” To blacken, begrime. 

Page 136, par. 2. “ Borne vicariously.” Done or suffered by one for 
the sake of another. 

CHAPTER XV. AN UNEASY CONSCIENCE. 

The thoughtful reader of “ Silas Marner ” cannot fail to notice the care 
with which the author divides into paragraphs, chapters, etc. The rhe- 


198 


NOTES. 


torical qualities of group-unity and transition are observed with exact- 
ness. What is the purpose, then, of inserting here this abbreviated 
chapter, the topic scarcely deserving more extensive treatment than an 
ordinary paragraph ? Why make it a chapter at all, instead of adding 
it to Chap. XIV ? 

CHAPTER XVI. SIXTEEN YEARS AFTER. 

This chapter serves primarily as a character sketch of Eppfe, secondarily 
as a picture of the humble members of the Raveloe group especially con- 
nected with Marner’s household. Is the delineation of Eppie drawn 
mainly by narration or by description ? How does the method compare 
with that used in Chap. IV in depicting Dunstan Cass ? The reader will 
notice, too, that although the chapter deals principally with Eppie, yet at 
its conclusion he has a deeper insight into the inner life of Silas, of Dolly 
Winthrop, and of Aaron than from all that has preceded. Hence the 
importance of the chapter as an essential part of the story. 

The student should also notice as a matter of plot-structure how the 
author looks forward, page 152, in Eppie’s discovery of the unparalleled 
condition of the stone-pit and in the explanation that is offered, thus pre- 
paring for what occurs in a subsequent chapter. The reader’s attention 
already having been drawn to the fact of the drainage, and the reason for 
it having been presented, the subsequent discovery is freed from all un- 
reality. George Eliot’s work is characterized by this attention to detail. 

Page 140, par. 1. “ Ratepayer.” Taxpayer. 

Page 145, par. 2. “Fetishism.” Worship of any objects believed to 
be the dwelling of good or bad spirits ; superstition. 

Page 147, par. 5. “Happen.” Perhaps. 

Page 150. “ Dame school.” Children’s school conducted by a school- 
mistress or dame. 

CHAPTER XVII. THE WAGES OF SIN. 

This chapter presents the moral of which George Eliot is so fond — that 
man reaps what he sows. Godfrey had sinned, yet circumstances had 
apparently smiled upon him : his brother had disappeared instead of 
remaining at home to bully him ; his miserable wife had perished, her 
secret still locked in her own bosom ; he had won Nancy ; he had suc- 
ceeded to his father’s estate ; prosperity attended him on every side, — 
still Godfrey is an unhappy man ; from his prosperity he draws no true 
delight ; to him life is tasteless, empty. In his very soul he is as wretched 


NOTES. 


199 


as when his evil ways were fresh upon him and Dunstan was at home to 
drive him to desperation. The cause of all this — his own sin and its 
concealment. The moral is plain. The evil doer can draw from “ Silas 
Marner ” no encouragement that sin does not bear its own fruit. 

Another element that enters essentially into the chapter is the delinea- 
tion of Nancy’s character, which is carefully done in preparation for the 
burden that is so shortly to fall upon her. Some study may well be 
devoted to the striking contrast drawn between the essential points of 
Godfrey’s character and that of his wife, and also to those particular traits 
that will be most influential when she shall learn the truth about Godfrey 
and Eppie. 

Page 155, par. 2. “ Spar.” A crystalline lustrous mineral. 

Par. 4. “ Poor-rate.” A parish tax imposed by the parish officials for 
the support of the poor. 

Page 156, par. 5. “Michaelmas.” The festival of S. Michael, Sep- 
tember 29, one of the important days in the church year. 

Page 158, par. 5. “ Mant’s Bible.” An edition of the Bible early in 
the nineteenth century with notes by D’Oyley and Mant. 

CHAPTER XVIII. CONFESSION. 

A dramatic scene in which the husband confesses to his wife the secret 
which for more than fifteen years he has carefully'concealed. The sim- 
plicity as well as the concentrated power with which George Eliot narrates 
the scene is notable. 

The student must interpret, in view of the preceding chapter, the quiet 
way in which the proud and pure-minded Nancy receives the confession 
of Godfrey. It is an interesting bit of mind study. For instance, trace, 
as far as possible, the thoughts that course through her mind during the 
paragraphs, page 167, between Godfrey’s words, “ Eppie is my child,” and 
her first words, “ Godfrey, if you had but told me this six years ago.” 

CHAPTER XIX. EPPIE MAKES HER CHOICE. 

Silas’s restoration is complete ; his treasure is found, but arouses in him 
none of the emotion of old, merely a sensation of gratitude that here, per- 
haps, is a security against the evils of old age and illness. His only loss 
now could be the loss of Eppie herself, his all in all. The student will 
observe that scarcely has Silas given voice to this thought when there 
enters the very one through whom that loss would be possible, and that 
he enters with the hope of taking Eppie away, 


200 


NOTES. 


The chapter, from that moment, is dramatic, charged with energy, but 
by an energy of the heart rather than of action, made evident by what is 
withheld rather than by what is expressed. Follow in detail the soul- 
working of Godfrey, of Silas, of Eppie, of Nancy. Modern novelists are 
fond of showing us how two elements enter into the determination of 
man’s personality, — first, heredity, or inherited tendencies ; and second, 
environment, or the influence of surroundings. How do these two ele- 
ments appear respectively in Eppie at the crucial moment of her life ? 

The chapter emphasizes the bitterness of Godfrey’s punishment. With 
confession, repentance, and determination to right the wrong to the ut- 
most of his power, he feels that his sin is expiated, that he may now begin 
life anew, and taste true happiness. He has yet to learn that the past is 
irrevocable, that he must reap the fruit of his deliberate wrong-doing. 
The full force of the blow, as the realization falls upon the proud Squire, 
George Eliot describes by a bit of dynamic writing in the brief paragraph 
of two lines that closes the chapter. It is a piece of notable concentration. 

CHAPTER XX. ALONE AT HOME. 

The very brief scene described in this chapter is remarkable for the 
simplicity with which it is told. 

Is there any difference between the Godfrey of this time and the God- 
frey of the day when Eppie came to Silas ? 

CHAPTER XXI. THE PASSING OF LANTERN YARD. 

Silas’s visit to the scene of his early days appropriately closes the 
story as the tale of a completed life. Godfrey’s course was brought to 
its natural close in the preceding chapter, and the little journey to Lan- 
tern Yard shows in an allegorical way that Silas’s connection with the 
past is entirely broken. Now that Lantern Yard is no more, Silas is 
wholly of Raveloe. With no backward glances to the days of his youth, 
his entire life now centers about Eppie. 

Page 181, pun 2. “Carriers.” Those who carried merchandise and 
an occasional passenger from town to town. The reader of “ David Cop- 
perfield” will recall Mr. Barkis, a classic representative of the trade. 

CONCLUSION. 

The Conclusion brings together all those who have played any part in 
the story. It is a series of little character touches and of narration by 


NOTES. 


201 


“ effects ” rather than by direct statement. In a single sentence or two 
flash out the old peculiarities of Priscilla, of Mr. Macey, of the farrier. 
A depth of meaning underlies the apparently casual remarks about God- 
frey’s pressing business at Lytherley on the wedding day, and the altera- 
tions made to Silas’s humble home through the Squire’s generosity. 

Is there any word, applicable to the story as a whole, to be drawn from 
Eppie’s closing words ? 










. 






















* 






















































































































































































































































































































































































Blue Shirt 
and Khaki 

By JAMES F. J. ARCHIBALD 

War Correspondent 



I Cloth. 269 pp. 100 photographs by the author. $1.50 

\ 

A Narrative-Comparison 

Of the traits, personnel, strategy, tactics, disci- 
pline, commissariat, transportation, etc., of the 


British and American Armies 


“A timely and comprehensive review of two military systems which 
have much in common, illustrating his comparisons with incidents and 
facts acquired in a long course of observation as a military specialist.” — 
I Army and Navy Journal. \ 

“ Crammed with interesting information.” — Washington Times. 

!] “ For the reader who wants to be entertained and will not object if he 

'absorbs interesting information at the same time.” — Chicago Evening Post. 

“ Picturesque illustrations. Interesting throughout.” — Buffalo Express. 

I “ Quite the sanest and most comprehensive volume we have received 
from the war correspondents.” — Brooklyn Daily Eagle. 

“The book can be heartily commended for its frank truthfulness and 
for the new light that it throws on many much-discussed problems.” — 
San Francisco Chronicle. 


Silver, Burdett & Company 

NEW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO 


Charles G. D. Roberts’s 

Booh 


The Forge in the Forest. 

Being the Narrative of the Acadian Ranger, Jean de Mer, 
Siegneur de Briart, and how he crossed the Black Abbe, and 
of his Adventures in a Strange Fellowship. 

Illustrated by Henry Sandhqm. Cloth, deckle-edge paper, y 12 pp., $/.JO. 

The first of a trilogy of romances of the convulsive period of the struggle between the 
French and English for the possession of North America. The Expulsion of the Acadians 
is foreshadowed in these brilliant pages. 


A Sister to Evangeline. 

Being the Story of Yvonne de Lamourie, and how she went 
into Exile with the Villagers of Grande Pre. 

New illustrated edition, Cloth , deckle-edge paper, gilt top, 2q 8 pp. , $1.^0. 

A romance of the great Expulsion of the Acadians which Longfellow first immortalized 


in “Evangeline.” Though independent of “The Forge in the Forest,” we are amid the 


same scenes and meet again some of the marked personages of that prior novel. 

By the Marshes of Minas. 

Illustrated . Cloth , uncut edges , gilt top . 2Q8 pp ., $B.2 5. 

This is a volume of romance of love and adventure in that picturesque period when Nova 
Scotia was passing from the French to the English regime, of which Professor Roberts is the 
acknowledged celebrant. Each tale is independent of the others, but the scenes are similar. 
Most of these romances are in the author's lighter and more playful vein. 

Earth’s Enigmas. 

Cloth, uncut edges. 2 q 6 pp., $1.25. 

The tales deal with those elemental problems of the mysteries of life which occur 
chiefly to the primitive folk on the backwoods fringe of civilization, and they arrest atten- 
tion for their sincerity, their freshness of first-hand knowledge, and their superior craft. 

The Heart of the Ancient Wood. 

Cloth. Illustrated. 2J2 pp., $1 .50. 

This book, which strikes a new note in literature, is a realistic romance of the folk of 
the forest — a story of the alliance of peace between a pioneer's daughter in the depths of 
the Ancient Wood and the wild beasts who felt her spell and became her friends. It is a 
book of enchanting atmosphere and mounting imagination. 


A History of Canada. 

Cloth, hea-vy paper, gilt top, 506 pp , $2.00 net. 

This book is of particular interest to Americans for its independent treatment of the 
many questions in dispute between the two countries, from the Revolution to the present. 

The Poems of Mr. Roberts. 

Songs of the Common Day. The Book of The Native. 

In Divers Tones. New York Nocturnes. 

Cloth and gold, $r.00 each. 

These volumes include Professor Roberts's poems from the time of his first recognition 
as a master poet. The wondrous appreciation of nature, the sensibility to the poetry of men 
in crowds, the virile, exalted passion, the playfulness, the human perspective, the craft and 
the music of his later volumes which determine his rank, are also seen in the earlier works. 

These books are sold by Booksellers , or will be mailed , postpaid , on receipt of price . 



tlber, BSurtictt anb Company 

jl^ctu gorft , Boston Cl)tcago 


*7 


l Jr 3 




w 





















* n x ^ «\ <0 /f / c S /h 

A ** aa" 





V * \0 o. > 

A° * * K 

>* f 0 ' ^i' 4 ' 

A k * ^ * a ^ v 

. O ^ <3 <=> * ^ ^ 



^ 7 0 , A * A 

VA A ‘ oKl 

* •>»•. A> < 



^ A 



f°<. r ^^y, 

*' *f> 0 l-.,V'"' 

- A -^AA V . 

cc - X) v ^1 


C> 


. 1 D 


<r 


* aV </> 

->’ ^ A % 

* A o_ -v 




A' 


H°°<. 


fll *5- 

.\ 5 ^ •* 

A «> *+ % 

\^ s * * , * 0 N 0 

V V s AL/ '/ . > jSr * v * A c> 



'O 


n v- \ 



A* ^ 




Y 0 * K * A 



£ , %. A .V, 

yh J z <*> v 


\ s * * T 

V A 


.0 


c. -A 

A. 


A 

fc ^ ^ O 

* * 


^ ^ ^ A”- ;■ ■■ <* 

\\ X ON c/^- A v 1 

A ^ ** A v A 



* <v 


0 * K 


A 


0 N. 


\° °x. 


/Via A 



■tv v« 1 ’ ’ * 

v A v_ t » 

r. A ^ 

, a- 

‘ A s . . , A* .0 h 0 ’A' 

V A ^ *9 A A C k V s 

V > A r <3 5, « -p V ^ >, 

* <* AA r ‘ <•• v \. * 4$ tot 

- i> %■ . AtvA ° ^ .A - 




A 


✓ „ . •& A 


v\ c o* 


» - A- V* 

^ « X° °* 

V ^ 


4 A i). 


^?7 * U I \ ^ ^ 0 si 0 ^ A ~ — * 

*-'*», A \> s'”'* A ,o v »'■■">' % 

r 9 r A* - s y A ^ ^ ^ * 

- -> ^ ,\-, * *5m&* • ^ <••» * 

<r> .ov 



tf t 




r V' 

c </> A 

* /V .Vi 


s 


0 


A“ 


1 A, 



t. . , V * » " » y°° „ , . o >; * « ■ > • ° v < s . . , JV : ^ > , 

'Kf <i- *• A A ) ° .v, •* <, < . < a • 

-S-.A * A \ W / n ,° ^ f oS®®*, * 

/ v / .-^1 R\>At . — 

C. >> 7 

>^v 'v V, * * V; .J 1/^&AN * <\ y * 

■» A 'o £ ■ , •■ » t 4 ' * - 

A “’**«,•% ,0" AV'VA, / c » ~ 

^ Jje^f ' ' / . a 2._, ^ T y \\ 4. 

; "00' :£ m &* *av* . 

* tHJb» = x° q,. * sA 






a! 


<1 r\ 

* .0 * 0 5 <0* ^ < 

* ^ 9* ***<>, ^ 

- A % 


\V </> 

0 </\ 


K-js y x " o > 

y ° * ^ a\ A . 0 * r %> '' 1 ** S \^ G «v < fl 4 
JA A % O r 0 V v* * 

A.v ^ ^ 0 ^ 

^O 0" 

»> 


\ 


w <\V </> 

\^ - 4 ? * 

& ' 


z 


0 * * "\\\ A c 0 N c ’ V 
.-fc* * C ^ P- 

AN ^ ^ 

^ ° %> 


' * 


0 


\°* 


U. 




» 


■> ,0- 

A » v * » ^ 'V 


a 


1/ a c S ^U y 0 « .V ^ <\ r ^D ' '/ 

*,* 0 ^ v • v 1 * * A. c“"‘l ?0 

' % ^ ^ 0 ^ ' 

>0* ^°x. >- 

> C 

^ ^ o ^ ^ ' 

^ .0 H 0 71 * 8 > 1 * 0- s 

,9^ V vV^- 

“= MCT ///2 / ^ 



W :! / 






